Snuggles the Symbiote Side Stories and Apocrypha
by Rater202
Summary: These are Non-Canon snippets, AU scenarios, or just scenes that don't fit into the regular Snuggles story. Rated for language.
1. Cuddlebug's theme

**Cuddlebug's Theme**

Cuddlebug, Cuddlebug.

Beats up bad guys, and likes hugs.

Summons wings, and some claws.

Stops the people who break the laws.

Look out!

There goes the Cuddlebug!

Are they strong? Listen here.

They're genetically engineered!

Can they glide, through the sky?

Take a look way up high!

Hey there!

There goes the Cuddlebug!

In the afternoon,

When trouble is near.

She will be there soon.

So friends, never fear!

Cuddlebug, Cuddlebug,

Friendly Neighborhood Cuddlebug.

Fun and Friends,

She adores,

Heroism's its own reward!

To her, life is a great big something,

something something something

You'll find the Cuddlebug!

Vista looked up from the sheet of paper and looked up to Cuddlebug, who was standing next to her, waiting for her opinion.

"We kind of ran out of steam at the end," she admitted sheepishly. "Fitting lyrics to a melody is hard." There was no melody or sheet music on the paper, but Vista didn't point that out.

"What I think," Vista said, "honestly? I think that if Image or Marketing finds out you're thinking about theme songs, that I will have to kill you."


	2. Snuggles: Noir

**Snuggles: Noir**

Grandpa Patrick had left me his lucky crucifix. I wasn't religious, I couldn't much see the point of it, but Grandpa was one of four people I gave a damn about, the other three being Mom, Pa, and yours truly. So I'd worn it, ever since the funeral. Besides, it was a family heirloom, Grandpa had always said that it'd been given to one of our ancestors by _Saint_ Patrick. I didn't quite believe it but I knew for sure was that it was really old and small enough to wear like a locket.

Of course, a family that was part Irish and part... Honestly, I don't know if we were Chinese or Japanese. Anyway, a family like ours tended to attract attention-especially since Pa looked the Irish a lot more than I do, and that's why I was hiding in the attic of our home. Some nasty fellows of some sort or another had busted down the door and said something about 'our kind' mixing our blood and polluting blood and a bunch of other stuff I didn't cath. I only heard them, I'd been in bed when it'd happened and while Pa had gone to confront them Ma had rushed me off and hid me. Ma didn't stay with me.

It was loud, a great commotion, finished with two gunshots. My heart clenched, I shed a tear... I heard one of them say something. "There's one more, some brat," and my tears dried... I had to get out of here, there'd be time to cry later.

As carefully and as quietly as I could, I pushed myself up... There was an old broom up here, not sure why, and I jammed it through the latches on the attack door. That way they'd have to work on it if they realized I was up here... That gave me time.

...There was no way out of here. The attic wasn't that big to begin with, since it wasn't that big a house, and it was full of boxes... Well, there was a tiny window... _Maybe_ I was small enough to squeeze through. The boxes were stacked just right...

Carefully, very carefully, I inched my way up a wobbling stack of boxes with lots of old clothes and made my way a few feet up to the window... Yeah, it was just big enough... There was a small latch I could pull-I stopped when I heard footsteps just below the attic and someone swearing.

A few seconds later, I heard whoever it was walking away and undid the latch. I tried to push the window open. The boxes under me wobbled a bit more than It'd been when I was climbing. I'd had just enough time to say "damn it!" before I hit the floor and the boxes tumbled down around me with a crash.

Everything hurt now. I groaned and pushed myself back up just as I heard the commotion from downstairs. Seems like whoever it'd been that had taken issue with my family. A bit dazed, I saw that... Oh no.

Once, when I was about six, Mom had shown me this old box. Said it was a family heirloom that her parents had brought when they came to America from... Well, there wasn't any Irish on Mom's side of the family. The box was fancy, made of gold and jade, and Mom had said there was a story that went with the box that she'd tell me when I was older... That I'd never get to hear, I guess... Unless it turns out Heaven's real, in which I figure I'll get to hear it real soon.

Anyway, the box had fallen out of the other box and broke open. So... Mom and Pa were probably dead, the people who killed them were downstairs and planning to kill me, and I'd just broken a priceless heirloom in my attempt to escape, which was just a perfect topper to a terrible night-wait? What was that black stuff leaking out of it?

Just as someone downstairs started banging on the attic door, this oil took shape, a shadowy mass with eight-glowing red eyes. It looked at me and flowed around me and I could feel something forcing its way into my mouth and nose and ears and around my eyes...

 **Snuggles: Noir**

I heard someone talking in a language that I didn't understand. It was like loud whispering, calm shouting, and sharp nails on glass all at once.

I had no idea where I was, just that it was dark, except for bits of light shining off of shards of glass. One was close enough for me to reach out and grab it, so I'd have a light to see with, and suddenly I was in like... a forest or something.

There was a man in what looked like a dress. I couldn't make out more than that, but he was facing a woman who was sticking out the top of a giant spider. The man said something I couldn't catch and the spider-woman screamed and was lifted off the ground and stretched and spiraled through the air before diving for the man and vanishing.

The man turned and I saw him closing the lid on Mom's box. Then the vision ended and I was back in the darkness. I reached for another shard.

This time it was like... Not sure how to describe it, a village in the Far East, maybe?. A woman with nine fluffy tails had her hand buried in the chest of a man, while the man in the dress cast his spell again and trapped her in Mom's box.

More shards, more visions, more monsters-A stiff, dancing man on a dirt road, a white-furred ape in the mountains, an ugly old woman in a snowy forest, a six-armed ogre with extra faces in the jungle, a devil in the desert, a shriveled body sucking the blood from a woman's neck in a cemetery, and other creatures I couldn't begin to describe all went in Mom's antique box.

Soon enough, I was back in the darkness with no more shards to light my way. The glowing red eyes were back.

"You.." said the scary voices. "His blood flows through your veins... The one who made us like this, this wretch... We will enjoy draining your life away and riding your corpse back to-" and here it broke out into dozens of voices, each saying a different place.

Suddenly, I could feel myself falling. I felt something grabbing at me, and all of the strength in my body began leaving me.

"Grandpa... Mom... Pa... I guess I'll be with you soon..." With the last of my strength, I reached up and clutched Grandpa Patrick's lucky crucifix.

Suddenly, the draining and falling feeling stopped. "What," the scary voice asked. "What did you do? How... The sorcerer's blood? The charm? How!? how...?"

The eyes vanished and the darkness around me started to clear up. Soon, I was back in the attic, surrounded by broken boxes and the shredded remains of my nightgown... I'd have been worried if I hadn't noticed that I was covered in a thick cloak of the shadowy stuff that I guess must have been a bunch of demons and crap like that that all got mashed together by however many greats Grandpa the sorcerer.

I reached for Grandpa's crucifix and gave Christ a kiss. I don't know if it'd been Grandpa's ghost, Mom and Pa's, Jesus or a Saint, some leftover magic from the far east, or just pure dumb that'd saved me, but I was gonna leave some coins in the church's collection box the next chance I get, just in case.

There was a banging, and I saw the attic door shift and the broom I'd jammed in it shatter. That's right, I still have this to deal with... To Hell with running, I'd just fought off a demonic possession. I let the man come up into the attic.

He was wearing a mask, goggles over a bandana, so I couldn't quite make out what he looked like. I wasn't sure how, exactly, I was going to deal with him, especially since he had his revolver aimed dead at me, but when he pulled the trigger... Well, I'd heard the bang but I was too busy clinging to the ceiling by my fingers and toes to get hit by the bullet.

I looked down at him just as he was looking up at me. All I could think about was that I'd wanted him gone, when suddenly a giant spider-leg, inky black and shiny, ripped from my back and ran the man through.

With a thought, the spider-leg pulled out and melted back into me. The man fell face forward and bled out. I let myself fall from the ceiling and landed on my feet. An octopus looking bit came out of the cloak of oily darkness and started sucking up the blood.

I'd killed this man... I knew it was wrong, to take another human beings life, but honestly, I couldn't bring myself to care. It was hard for me to care about other people-I knew right from wrong, but I could really only care about what happened to people who were close to me. This man had broken into my home and killed my parents. He could burn in Hell for all I cared. Once the tendril had finished drinking the man's lifeblood, I took the man's revolver and jumped down into the house proper.

There were two more men, waiting just under the attic. One had a piece of a cast iron fence, the other had another revolver. Neither of them had much time to do anything. As soon as I landed, two more long of blackness tore out of me and wrapped around their throats. I wasn't sure how I know, but something sharp had dug its way into their necks and was taking the blood straight from their bodies.

I dropped them once their bodies were dry and went to find...

Mom and Pa were dead. I'd known it, but The inky blackness had tried to take their blood, from where it leaked out of the gunshot wounds, but with a thought, I forced it back. I don't care how hungry the thing was, these were my parents.

Pa had died with his eyes open. I closed them. Then I went to the sitting room and took a chair.

...I had no idea what to do now. I was an orphan, and I'd read enough comic strips and seen enough talkies to know that orphans got treated like garbage unless they got adopted by a well to do type, and I'm not seeing a wealthy industrialist taking in a yellow girl.

I held up Grandpa's lucky crucifix again. I thought on it, and on what'd happened in the attic... What did all of that mean for me now?

As I thought about things, suddenly I could hear the voices again. The fiends, it seems, were still here. I focused on them, as much as could... Figuring this out would distract me from my problems.

After about ten minutes, I'd learned it all-the fiends, the parasite, their power and spite made a liquid and shadowy flesh, were trapped, helpless within me. They were hungry, so very, very hungry, for blood, for life... But as long as I kept them sated, their powers were mine to use as I wished.

I gave it a test, first making my cloak of shadow vanish within my body. Once I'd known I could do that, I called it up again and made it more... Solid. Instead of a shroud, I made proper clothing-shirt and pants, boots, gloves, and a black trench coat. On a whim, I'd made a hat-a fedora, I think they were called, and a black mask to cover the top of my face.

I had no clue what I was going to do about food, shelter or the like, but New York City was full of crime and corruption and I wasn't quite sure that The Spider-Man or The Punisher could deal with it all. There were plenty of men like the ones that attacked my family, people I wouldn't feel bad about feeding to the mass of darkness, rage, and toxic bile... The Venom, that's what I'd call it. I might be young, but I could make the best of a bad situation, and do my part to help clean up this town.

One of the fiends had had a magic spell that let it keep things elsewhere and call them back as needed. I'd used it to pack up my room, the men's revolvers, and some possessions of mine and my parents that I just couldn't go without, and then I set out into the night.

 **Snuggles: Noir**

I was coughing up a lung. I crushed out the butt of the cigar I'd gotten my hands on. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why in Hell people liked those things, but The Spider-Man was my go-to for how this vigilante thing worked, and he seemed to be going by the example of the dicks in the Talkies. Those investigators tended to favor their cigars and their drink.

The Venom was rather upset with me, saying that they had to purge some toxins or something with every drag of smoke or sip of hooch I took in, but they were man-eating monsters so I didn't give a damn about their opinions.

I'd been keeping my eyes on an elderly fellow by the surname Prast. From what I'd heard while dropping the eaves on the gossipy hens of the neighborhood. The story, as I'd put it together, was that he'd come here from Switzerland with a child bride to make his fortune three or four decades ago, only to force his bride to work in a factory while he sat on his ass all day, drinking away her salary and beating her when the whiskey and beer stopped flowing. The girl had apparently gotten involved in a labor strike in oh-seven, then vanished. Prast senior was suspected of murder but never convicted, and he'd had a few relationships, all with women much younger than himself, and in each case, it ended with bruised women and children fleeing the cruel drunk.

At his age, after a lifetime of drink, he'd make a meager meal for The Venom, but he was just a parasite, an evil man who took from good people and only gave back hurt. Nobody would miss him, and we were hungry.

And there he was, walking out of his favorite liquor shop. I dropped down from my perch on a building into a dark, secluded alley that Prast always stumbled past on his way home, and I waited, waited, waited... I pulled on The Venom, forming a tentacle from one of the fiends and grabbing the drunk by the throat and pulling him to me.

As he struggled against the strangling force and the fangs piercing his flesh to take his blood and life, he dropped the bottle he'd purchased, which I'd caught in my own hands... Huh, this stuff was from Kentucky. I wondered if it tasted better than that scotch-whiskey I'd gotten my hands on. I worked my spell and sealed it away just as the drunkard breathed his last, and then went through his pockets. It'd seemed that his drink of choice had cleaned him out, he only had a few pennies to his name.

I left the corpse in the alley with the rest of the trash, and with an illusion to make myself look older I made my way to a cathedral where I deposited Prast's pittance in a box collecting alms for the poor.

 **Snuggles: Noir**

I'd hit paydirt. Some gang or another that'd been kidnapping people aged between twelve and twenty-one and selling them to folks out of state for slave labor and the like. Even worse, a couple of cops in this cesspit of a city knew about the operation but didn't do a damn thing about it, because they were on the take.

Officer O'Malley had been particularly satisfying to The Venom.

A bit of tracking, a few... interrogations, and I'd managed to find my way to their base of operations.

Right now, it seemed that they were between shipments... It meant I couldn't save the people who were already gone, but I could at least make sure that nobody else would suffer... Except for the criminals that were about to get eaten.

I kicked down the door with the strength of giants and rushed in. Only a couple of gangsters were in the main building. One man had gone for his firearm, but he was too slow and a bullet from one of the revolves that had killed my parents had pierced his heart.

There were four other men, each standing and rushing me. Four spider-legs erupted from my back and then twisted into tendrils which slew the men and feasted upon their vital fluids.

Once they were drained, I set The Venom to clean up what was left of the man I shot while I looted the corpses. A few more pistols and a whole lot of cash later and I went in deeper into the building.

It was a few more thugs until I'd made my way to the man I assumed to be in charge. He was a pale man, with dark hair and serious eyes. He was sitting in a large office, in front of an expensive looking desk, drinking a dark red wine from a stemmed glass. He didn't stop drinking when I burst in.

"You the trafficker?" I asked.

He set his glass down and chuckled. "I am engaged in the business of selling human beings for profit, yes," he said in a smooth British accent.

I aimed one of my trophy revolvers for his chest and pulled back the hammer. This made him laugh again.

"Child," he said, "you're awfully young to be killing in cold blood. You've clearly got the talent for it, based on the sound of struggle I've heard and the fact that you've made it this far, but murder for personal or ideological purposes should be saved for men and women who are old enough to enjoy the company of other men and women."

I blinked. I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but I ignored it and pulled the trigger.

The powder exploded, the bullet whizzed out of the barrel, and the man barely flinched as the bullet impacted his chest.

And then he, without a word, reclaimed his glass and finished his wine. "Are you done?"

"What?" I asked? The voices of the Venom were likewise confused.

"Child," the pale man said, "you don't get as far as I have in this line of work without investing in armor with which to protect oneself from bullets." He undid he jacket, showing that he'd had an iron plate on over his shirt. "It's surprisingly simple and quite easy to wear once you have built up the strength. I'm surprised that more criminals don't likewise protect themselves."

Someone had come into the room beyond me and some... Strange green smoke was starting to fill the room.

"At this point, child," the trafficker said, "our business is concluded. I leave you to my newest hire."

I turned around and saw a man, dressed up in a tattered suit and... "Hey, I know you... You're that magician fellow that picked a fight with The Spider-Man, Mister Eeoh or something."

"Don't speak that name to me!" He shouted. He seemed to be drunk. "I, Mysterio, spent years studying the mystic arts only for the powers that should rightfully be mine to end in the hands of another, and now, because the Spider hoards the blood of Anansi for himself, my career is ruined and I've no power to show for it..." The walls were now melting. "And now I'm forced to squander my talents serving..." I couldn't hear the last bit of the magician's drunken rant because everything had melted away and been replaced by a foggy field in the middle of nowhere.

I started walking, trying to figure how in Hell I'd gotten here, with one of the voices of The Venom mumbling something or other. Then something reached from the fog and grabbed me by the arm. I struck at the withered arm and hit it hard enough to break its grip, but something else had grabbed me by the ankles and made me fall over.

More shriveled limbs reached from the fog and grabbed at me, my arms and legs held in a tight grip, holding me pined, and then a gnarled hand appeared and closed around my throat.

I called upon all of the powers of The Venom and lashed out but I couldn't shake the phantom arms off. Everything started going dark as my bosom burned and screamed for air.

Just as I began to pass out, I heard an explosion. The fog cleared and I was back in the office. I could see a figure, armored in gold and red and perched upon what seemed to be a bat out of Hell, the office a total mess, and then I knew no more.

 **Snuggles: Noir**

I woke up in a bed. A bed more comfortable than I could possibly have imagined. Reluctantly, and slowly, I opened my eyes. The first thing I noticed was that the bed-quite a large one, in fact, was in the middle of a large room, with one wall that formed a circle. I wanted to say it was a bedroom, but everything was glass and metal and... A curtain of some kind covering up a good twenty feet of wall.

I wasn't in the outfit I'd forced The Venom to form into, but a proper nightgown, not unlike what I'd been wearing two weeks ago when this had all started. I sat up, trying to figure out how I'd gotten here when my attention was drawn to a sort of whoosh-zoom sound.

A door I hadn't noticed, because it'd been two panels seamless in a wall, had spread open and another girl, a young woman who looked injun-Swamy, not cowboys and injuns-walked in holding a platter or something.

She was dressed in strange clothing that I'd never seen ever before, pants and boots like the cowboys wore, except both black, and strange blue jacket that looked like colored leather, with small spikes starting from the shoulders and trailing down her arms. As she got closer I noticed that the lines and shadows of her eyes looked like they'd been tattooed a vibrant green. Her hair was all off in stiff angles and one sharp bang over her eye left eye was the same green as her eyes instead of the black of the rest of her hair.

"Morning," she said as though none of this was at all strange. "You're lucky that the Doc sent me there in time. Ya almost lost your shocking life doing the vigilante thing before you were ready."

"I'm sorry, Ma'am-"

"Don't call me Ma'am," the girl said quickly. "I'm not even Nineteen yet, don't be calling me a grandma title."

"...Sorry," I said, "look, who are you?" I asked. "Where am I?"

"To start," she said, taking a seat on the bed and leaving the tray somehow floating in the air "I'm Andrea X, X being my actual surname, believe it or not, Dad changed back in 2080 when 1990s nostalgia was all the rage. I'm the Cuddlebug of the 22nd Century," she said with a grin. "Of course, back home my Mister Snuggles and I go by Gold Goblin."

I blinked. "Cuddlebug? Mister Snuggles? Are you kidding me?"

She laughed. "Anyway," she said, "you're in what Doctor Cuddle calls Cuddle Castle, on Earth 69782341. Home of the Interdimensional Council of the Cuddle, which is a really fancy name for what amounts to a support group for superpowered orphans who are mostly just alternate timeline versions of Ashley O'Leary and/or Mister Snuggles."

"Okay," I said, "You lost me at Doctor Cuddle."

"Well," she said, "think of it like this: The world is a big place, far bigger than anyone can ever imagine. There's a lot of people just like you, most of them are even Irish-Asian-American girls named Ashley, and some cosmic being out there in the Aether has decreed that most of them are to have really shocking bad childhoods involving being violently orphaned and two of them met by freak chance and decided that no, that was a load of shocking trash."

"Why do you keep saying shocking like it's a curse?"

"Because I'm from about a hundred and seventy or so years in your future and language changes over time," she said. "Just... The Cuddle Cosmic and Doc keep an eye out on people like them and reach out to help the ones who don't get help, or, well, enough help," She admitted, "Cuddlekitten's here every weekend even though she's a scholarship student at the James Howlett Academy for Badass Freaking Mutants and I'm mostly here because there's not enough action to go around back home."

She cracked her knuckles. "Anyway, the gist of it is that we're here to offer you a place to stay and a support network." She pulled a lid off the tray. "Also food."

I wasn't sure what that sandwich was, but it smelled delicious and I was starting to realize that I was hungrier than I'd ever been.

She handed me a vial of something blue. "Drink this first," she said. "It should keep your friends from acting up for a bit... Uh, it's best to do it in one gulp."

I drank it down. It was bitter and tasted a bit like metal, but after trying that Kentucky bourbon it went down pretty smoothly. "Now, what's that?" I said, pointing to the odd loaf of bread with a filling I couldn't place.

"A heart attack waiting to happen," she said in complete seriousness. "It's called The Count of Monte Fatso and The Cuddle Cosmic swears by it."

I picked up the sandwich and, slowly, hesitantly... I took a bite.

Five minutes later, I was laying back down and regretting the fact that I'd eaten the entire thing. Andrea laughed again. "Yeah, I haven't met an Ashley who can pass one up yet. I don't see the appeal, but I haven't eaten meat in six years so that skews things a bit... So you thinking about staying?"

"Yes," I said. "It's not like I've got anywhere to go, and I'm clearly not cut out for the whole vigilante thing." Which left me not knowing what to do with myself... I sat back up and... I had a place to sleep now, at least, but what was there for me here?

Andrea wrapped her arms around me and held me close, a warm, safe grasp. Almost automatically I pressed myself closer into the hug. "Incidentally," she said, "this is why most of us go by Cuddlebug." I decided that this was enough, for now.

"So," she said, "How'd you like to hear my story?"


	3. Snuggles 2099

**Snuggles: 2099**

I was twelve. It was late in the year 2099, and the Spider-Man of my time had taken the good fight to Alchemex. I was never really religious, but my family had been raised Thorite, and the Thorites believed that the Spider-Man of the Heroic Age was herald and counsel to his holiness. Between that and the corporation's corruption, well...

I'm a Mutant, by the way. It's been in the family, coming and going. for generations, variations of chemical generation. I can puke up small globs of napalm and spit it a good 250 feet before my accuracy begins to suffer. Got the eyes to match, too. That'll be important in a minute.

So, me and a couple of other Thorite raised kids, uh... I was the baby of the bunch, actually. The next youngest was fourteen and I was mostly there for my powers-

 **Snuggles: 2099**

"Wait," Ashley Noir interrupted. "I'm confused, what's a Mutant? I think I saw something about that in a talkie once, but you don't fit with them."

I rolled my eyes. "I'll explain later."

 **Snuggles: 2099**

Anyway, an older boy, maybe sixteen, whose real name I never caught-The other kids had called him Sledge-had gotten us all together because he'd found an old storage facility where Alchemex had kept a bunch of things that even they didn't want getting out, and Sledge had been convinced that Thor would want his children to aid his Herald in his fight by denying the enemy some assets.

In hindsight, I think I'd been talked into joining a street gang. I hadn't considered it at the time, but well, Mom was long dead and Dad was never around so it's not like I knew better.

So anyway, we snuck out later that night and made our way to a building in the old part of NYC, full of refitted buildings that'd all been there since the Heroic Age, at the least.

I was there mostly as a lookout, in case the cops or Alchemex security guards came around since my eyesight was so good, but it turned out we needn't have worried about that. Though considering what we found... Honestly, it should have had all the security in the world.

 **Snuggles: 2099**

"Well, if that isn't ominous," Ashley Noir quipped.

"You have no idea..."

 **Snuggles: 2099**

So, some kid whose name I forgot, gonna call him Lock since he could pick locks, got the side door open. We all piled in and started exploring the building. I'll be honest, I was expecting a warehouse but it was really more of an office building that hadn't had people in it in decades.

Rachel-uh, I forgot to mention Rachel. Rachel was my... She was my best friend back then, the fourteen-year-old I mentioned. Her older sister Ruby was dating Sledge, and that's how the group found out about me... I'll be honest, everybody else in the group was kind of a blur, this was almost seven years ago and I didn't know them very well.

Anyway, Rachel pulled me to the side and told me that Ruby'd said they didn't need a lookout once they were in the building, so if I wanted she could take me home... I'll tell you, I wish I'd taken up the offer but I was stupid when I was a kid. I figured they'd meant that I'd be too scared to stay and I wanted to prove I was a big girl... Everything would have turned out better if I'd left.

So Sledge directed everyone down to a stairway... After he'd smashed the door down with his hammer.

 **Snuggles: 2099**

"He had a hammer?" Ashley Noir asked.

"Yeah, a sledgehammer," I explained. "It's why he was called Sledge."

 **Snuggles: 2099**

So, Sledge busted a door down and led us all down to the basement floors. The first couple of basements were full of just regular boxes, but Sledge said that his source said the best stuff was down in a vault in the lowest down sub-basement.

So we made our way down and got to the vault... And it was the most modern looking thing in the whole building if I'm gonna be honest. Lock got to work on the, well, locks, but after twenty minutes he told us we had to call it quits.

The vault was much more advanced, he'd said, than anything he'd dealt with. This was surprising, he'd said, because it seemed to be at least twenty-years-old and probably older still. He'd been able to disable the surprisingly still functional alarm, but the lock itself was designed to unlock to preprogrammed biometric signals that Lock couldn't fake.

And biometric means like handprints and blood tests. I saw that look in your eye, you were going to ask.

So Lock says that the only way we were getting into the vault was if somebody melted through the console that would have been used to take the biometric data. He said with the alarm disabled, there were fifty/fifty shots of that either locking us out forever or unsealing the vault.

Sledge decided that he liked those odds, and besides, this was an asset denial mission, and then looked back at me, knowingly.

I told everyone to stand back and coughed up a big ol glob of chemicals, rolled it around in my mouth a bit, and spat it up onto the console which quickly burst into white-hot flames and-

 **Snuggles: 2099**

"So... Why didn't your face burst into flames?"

I blinked. "Shock if I know."

 **Snuggles: 2099**

So anyway, I set the console on fire and then we have to jump back upstairs and basically let it burn for the next half an hour. Couldn't stay and watch it because burning plastic lets off deadly gasses and stuff, so we had to wait those out. Ruby pulled out an old-fashioned paper deck of cards and taught me how to play some caveman era game called Klondike, which was kind of fun.

But after half an hour it seemed like everything had settled down and we went back down to the vault. My flaming loogie had burned clean through the console and the vault door had popped open.

Everyone congratulated and praised me. Rachel gave me a big hug and Sledge ruffled my hair. I beamed... Like I said earlier, Mom was dead and Dad was never around, I wasn't used to that kind of thing.

So then with the door popped, it was easy enough for Sledge-who was a big guy-and one of the kids I don't much remember to force it open enough for us to get in. We were expecting it to be full of tech and stuff. It wasn't.

It was full of _blood._

 **Snuggles: 2099**

"Blood?" Noir asked, incredulously. "Who in Hell keeps a vault full of blood? Nosferatu?"

"Okay," I said with a chuckle, "I was just being dramatic. There was blood in vials, but that wasn't the only thing there." I stood up and stretched. "You know what DNA is?"

She shook her head.

 **Snuggles: 2099**

So DNA is the building blocks of life. It's made up of genes and alleles ad peptides and junk, which are things you get from your parents-you get half from Mom and half from Dad, and some of them you only need to get from one parent for them to show up and others you need both, but the gist is if you've got all of someone's-or something's-DNA, which you can find in blood, or hair, or skin, then you can find out what makes them tick. I said I was a mutant? That means I've got extra genes that let me do things that other people can't.

And if you're good with the science, you can take someone's DNA and use it-someone with my genes could give other people my fire spit, or just make a bunch of copies of me and raise them how they wanted.

And Alchemex had the blood of skin or hair from a bunch of different people in an old vault, and judging from the labels it was all from people with special powers because most of them had Super names. Like, maybe a dozen vials upfront. I saw ones labeled 'Daken' and 'Ai Apea-something,' and I heard Ruby asking who the shock 'American Son' was.

Sledge said he'd figured that Alchemex had forgotten about all this stuff because there's no way they'd just leave what was clearly Heroic Age Super DNA laying down in an old office if they'd known it was there. Just in case, he started smashing vials with his hammer and soon enough there was mixed super-blood and other samples in a big puddle on the floor. He asked me to spit on it to make sure it was all useless, so I burned it up good and then we went deeper in the vault.

There wasn't any more blood past the beginning, which made Ruby say that maybe the most important stuff was all in the back. Past the first layer, there were more vials, but these weren't blood. It was all labeled things like "Extremis" or "Legacy" or "Technorganic." Sledge pocketed a bunch of those vials after he read one I didn't see and said that it sounded like a virus he'd read about. Said it was too dangerous to smash them, in case they spread through the air.

Further into the vault, there was more tech. It looked like weapons and junk, an old armor with faded red and blue paint, and a vial of something green labeled "Super Goblin Soldier Serum Mark V." Sledge dumped it out and had me burn it, then he and the others each pocketed a couple of guns and smashed up everything else. They offered me a gun, but the smallest one was too big for my hands, so...

And soon enough, all that was left was a tarp.

 **Snuggles: 2099**

"If you're trying to be dramatic again," 1930s Peanut Gallery said, "it's not working."

"Quiet, you."

 **Snuggles: 2099**

So we pull the tarp back, and at first, we think it's more blood. But it's not in a vial, it's like... It's a glass canister about your size if I'm gonna be honest. And it's inert, not moving, so we figure that it's just a really big blood sample-like, from maybe a giant, like Thor and his kin did battle with and occasionally wed. Just, a giant-sized needle to take a giant-sized blood sample.

So, not wanting Alchemex to blaspheme if they remembered this stuff was here, Sledge smashed it and as the blood flowed and pooled, he asked me to destroy it.

I coughed up my napalm and spat... And then the blood flowed up and around, choking out the fire.

And then it jumped at me and forced its way down my throat. It felt like I was drowning and being stabbed from the inside-throat, chest, stomach, everywhere, all at once. My veins started burning, and as the burning flowed up and reached my brain...

Lifetimes of violence and sadism... Cletus Kasady. Norman Osborn, among others... Thousands of murders, years of madness, and so. Much. _Blood_.

And then years of captivity after being ripped from the Goblin Childe, occasionally experimented on, and...

And over everything, one sentence, over and over and over again.

 **Snuggles: 2099**

"Carnage. _Rules._ "

"You say that like it should mean something to me," Ashley Noir said. "It kind of reminds me of what happened when I bonded with The Venom, Andrea, but... Wait, Andrea," she said quickly, "you said you went by Gold Goblin... Goblin Childe..."

"The last people to host Carnage went by Red Goblin and Goblin Childe," I explained. "And before he hosted Carnage, Osborn was The Green Goblin. I learned that he used to run Alchemex, but back then it was Oscorp..."

"I repeat: I have no context for any of this."

"A monster possessed me and filled my had with the memories of killers and angry people so I wouldn't be able to resist its control," I finished bluntly.

 **Snuggles: 2099**

My head cleared up pretty quick. Uh, forgive me for speeding through this part, it's a bit painful for me to recall but it's part of the story... The Carnage symbiote took me over. It made me move, made me speak, I had _no_ control. That's the only thing that keeps me sane when I think about how it made me kill everyone. How it made me _eat_ everyone.

Rachel... My best friend... It looked it my mind and made me... She was last. She took the longest.

During the... slaughter, some of those virus vials that Sledge had pocketed broke, and instead of getting sick, it... After it finished eating my best friend, it started going for busted up bits of tech and licking residue out of vials...

I've done my best to... Repress what happened after all of that, because believe it or not being used as a puppet to kill my best friend wasn't the worst thing that happened, at least I've been told. All I remember is Carnage whispering in my ear about how good my mutie blood tasted and dissing Spider-Man as a poser compared to the Spiderman he knew. Eventually, we ran into Spider-Man, who defeated Carnage and got it out of my body... I honestly have no clue what happened to Carnage after that. I hope it's dead.

It was over... It was hard, but after a few months of bad dreams, I was starting to move on... And then I found out that the damn thing laid an egg in me, which hatched into another one of the shocking things.

At first, I was terrified. I, I wanted it out of me... but at the same time I was afraid to tell anyone-nobody knew that I was the one in the Carnage Suit. Even Dad didn't know what my bad dreams were about, so...

It wasn't doing anything yet, and I was able to keep it suppressed... And then it started talking to me. It had no idea why I was afraid... And then something clicked, from the memories that its parent forced on me.

Apparently, every couple of generations one of those monsters has to be careful when they make babies because chances are good that when one comes out, it'd come out crazy.

Which, for monsters like that, meant they come out good.

Eventually, we worked things out, I named him Mister Snuggles because I was twelve and that was the furthest thing from Carnage I could think of, and then we went out-Carnage was powerful, and the baby was just as strong. Maybe stronger, since it got a lot more out of the viruses and stuff from the Vault than the parent did.

We went out, used that power to do good deeds, which really made me feel better about... What Carnage made me do, and made Mister Snuggles feel better about being a monster's kid.

Of course, there was a great Space War with Captain America coming back, Miguel O'Hara gained the powers of Thor and a few years after all that everything started getting all peaceful. We did what we could to help, but when Doc and Cuddle cosmic contacted us about this we hopped right on.

 **Snuggles: 2099**

"And that's how I got into the business of helping out Cuddlebugs," I finished.

"So.. that armored figure that looked like it was riding a demon from Hell was you?"

"Yep!" I said with a smile. It was basically just a form that wasn't evocative of Carnage when I chose it, but from what I've been told by other Cuddlebugs, it strongly resembles an almost solid gold Iron Man suit, with minor red accents at the joints, with a metallic red Goblin cap-My partner being partially techno-organic after all the stuff the monster ate. From asking around, all the weapons that we'd smashed up before everything went to Shocking Hell was goblin Gear and a backup Iron Patriot armor. Carnage ate it, and between that, memories of when it bonded with its last host's armor and weapons, and some things that were a bit too technological to be viruses, it was easy enough to make bio-mechanical versions of those bits once we had the practice

Not that Depression Era Ashley here needed to know that since that would be way over her head.

"I basically live here now. I go home every couple of days-I've mended things with Dad, now that I'm old enough to know why he was never around, but..." I waved my hand lazily.

"So," Ashley Noir said, "where is this specifically? Like, is this a hospital, or?"

"Nah," I said. "We took you to the infirmary and had you checked out," I explained. "Scans said there was no damage, you just passed out because you thought you were passing out." I gestured around. "This is my room. Brought you here to sleep it off after Doc magicked you into some jammies."

"Why your room?" the kid asked.

"There's not that many of us here full time," I explained. "setting up rooms takes time, and if you'd turned down the offer... Of course, this means you'll have to room with somebody till we get things set for you."

"Your room seems pretty nice. Fancy." I took that to mean that she wanted to room with me, so I gave her another hug.

"It's hard," she said, "for me to get close to people-connect to people I don't know," she explained. "Not counting myself, there are three people I care about and they're all dead."

Yeah. Doc had warned me about that. Said that people who are mutants in baseline realities tend to be sociopaths in what had been dubbed Noir timelines. Eh, the kid was young. If she wanted to change that there was still time.

"But this," she said as she snuggled up close into my hug. "I like this."

I smiled. I think she'll turn out fine. "Good," I said. "Because this is about half of what we do around here." Then a thought occurred to me. "Kid? Don't let anyone know that you almost got killed by a Mysterio. Especially not a drunken Noir Timeline one."


	4. Halloween

**Halloween**

Missy, wearing a costume modeled on Miss Militia's, looked at Ashley with the most incredulous expression.

"Seriously?"

Ashley was dressed in normal tied tennis shoes and what appeared to be a one-piece Cuddlebug costume made of cheap pajama cloth. A cheap children's Halloween costume down to the zipper in the back and the eyeholes punched out of the solid cloth mask through which the youngest Ward's bright green eyes could only barely be made out.

"What?" the younger girl said defensively with her arms crossed. "You've never gone trick or treating dressed up as yourself before?"

"No," Missy replied bluntly. "They don't even make Halloween costumes based on the Wards. Only Protectorate members that are known nationwide or have been around long enough to attract a lot of fans," case in point, Missy's own Halloween costume. Miss Militia was a member of the first-ever Wards team, there had been plenty of time for her attract a following big enough that a profit could be made on Miss Militia Halloween costumes. "Actually, where did you even get that?"

And suddenly Ashley's mask took on the shiny, metallic, organic sheen of the actual Cuddlebug mask. A wide toothy grin of sharp fangs split it wide open and the fanged maw pulled back to show Ashley's face with a big cheesy smile.

Missy blinked. "That is incredibly unfair." This prompted Ashley to giggle. Then a thought occurred to Missy. "Do... Do you actually wear normal clothes, or...?"

"Of course I do," Ashley said with a blink. Part of her symbiote pulled away to show a white t-shirt. "I'm wearing normal clothes right now. You've literally never seen me when I wasn't wearing normal clothes."

"Sorry," Missy said, "It's just, I had to ask."

"You ask weird questions," Ashley said with a shrug as her symbiote returned to a cheap facsimile of Cuddlebug's costume. "So is there anything else we need to do before we can go?"

"Well, it doesn't officially start for another twenty minutes," Missy said while checking her watch.

"Oh."

Ten minutes later, Ashley was fidgeting like crazy. Missy rolled her eyes. "Come on, you're acting as if you've never done it before."

"I haven't," Ashley replied flatly. "I've always been too sick to do anything like this, or there'd be too big a risk I'd catch something if I went out even if I had the strength, or that my strength might give out. I've only ever left the house for doctor's appointments and my Grandpa's funeral before... Well, " Ashley finished with a shrug.

Missy looked down. "You know... I was gonna sneak back out when we were done-I know a couple of houses off the "approved route" that always have the good stuff, but if you can keep it a secret I think I might be able to smuggle you with me..."

Ashley made a zipping motion across her hidden lips and then giggled and soon enough it was time to head out.


	5. Theme Song Redux

We're Cuddlebug.

Here together.

And we're never going down to a jerk like you,

'Cause we're here forever.

And both of us are thinking 'be better-'

*break*

Missy looked up from the sheet of paper. "Ashley? Is his another case of you changing the lyrics from song some in your world to be about you?"

Ashley did not answer.

"Look, if you want a theme song, maybe write something original."

"...Not creative enough."

"Bullshit," Missy answered. "You told me about those fanfics you wrote and other than the killing off of that Silk lady in half of them they sound decent enough."

"That's differant," Ashley said shrinking down. "Fanfics don't have to rhyme."

"Okay," Missy said as she put the sheet down, "let's start with _why_ you want a theme song?"

"Well, the best heroes from back home have them songs... Spider-Man and Captain America had original themes and Iron-Man licensed that Black Sabbath song, and..."

"Okay," Missy interrupted with a raised finger. "Now, are the heroes in your world great becuase they have theme songs, or do they have theme songs becuase they're great?"

"...Songs because they're great..." Ashley admitted.

"I get it, you want to be like your heroes," Missy said as she walked over to Ashley, "but trying to force it just makes you look like a dork."

"Okay." Ashley then hugged Missy.

"Now," Missy said, "that aside, you should totally sing that," she gestured to the sheet of paper containing Ashley's parody lyrics, "out loud th next time you're sparring with Shadow Stalker."

"Why?"

"Becuase claiming that you're stronger than her will piss her off and I'd find that hilarious."


	6. Giving Thanks

**Giving Thanks**

"This is so dumb," Vista muttered as she hurled a handful of assorted small candies into the crowd.

"I'm having fun," Cuddlebug whispered as she waved to the people on the sidewalks.

The two girls had been assigned to PRT's float in the local Thanksgiving Day parade. The rest of the wards were working security.

"You think that everything is fun," Vista quipped. "You know we're only here because we're the youngest and the cutest, right?"

"I don't mind," Cuddlebug replied as she tossed some candy towards a group of even littler kids clustered together.

"But seriously," Vista continued, "what does anyone in this city have to be thankful for?"

"I'm thankful for a lot of things," Cuddlebug said honestly. "A year ago I was an orphan laying on a cold metal table while people pulled out my blood to make illegal drugs from the chemicals in it." She tossed more candy into the crowd and gave a wave. "Now I've got a new big sister who loves me, I'm not sick all the time, I've got honest to god real life meat-space friends that I love, and I'm a superhero helping people, something I've always wanted to do. I don't even have to worry about people finding out I'm a mutant." She paused for a moment, and then added, "Yes Mister Snuggles, I love you too."

"I don't like talking to you about things like this," Vista said while waving to civilians. "Your genuine and cheerful optimism makes me reconsider my sarcastic cynicism. I don't like that."

This prompted Cuddlebug to giggle.

A few moments later, the sounds of th parade were cut off by someone blaring Ride of the Valkyries.

The two young heroes turned to see behind them that an obviously drunken Hookwolf riving an open roof jeep had swerved into the parade, Stormtiger sitting in the back, firing what were hopefully blanks from a machine gun into the air.

"You know," Vista said, "I think there's something I'm thankful for after all: That I get to beat up Nazis!"

"That is really fun," Cuddlebug admitted.

"Throw me at them," Vista said. "I wanna kick Hookwolf in the face."

"Yay! Fastball special!"


	7. Just Because Hugs

**Just Because Hugs**

Cuddlebug came out of her and Weaver's room at Wards HQ, saw Vista alone in the common area so she walked up and gave her a hug.

"Hey, Cuddlebug," Vista said without otherwise acknowledging the hug. "What's up?"

"Nothing much," the hero who happened to be a child and a mutant replied.

"So what's the occasion for this hug?"

"No occasion," Cuddlebug explained. "It's just a 'just because hug.' "

"You sure about that?" Vista asked.

"I mean, yeah, what else would it be?"

"You've been excessively huggy the last couple of days," Vista deadpanned. "Seriously, what's up?"

"Uh... It's silly."

"Ashley... You're a mutant from an alternate universe full of magic and super-science that doesn't need powers bullshit to work. You've got an eldritch monstrosity from outer space living in your guts. You named it Mister Snuggles. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the Terminator in your universe instead of OJ Simpson, Atlanteans fought vampires in world war two, and you're the only person I've ever heard of who has been on a high school level in science and a second grade level in social studies."

"...It's not my fault you people never discovered Pym Particles," Ashley mumbled.

"The point is, the simple fact that you're the one talking makes his conversation as silly as it can possibly get," Missy finished. "So whatever it is, just say it."

"I think I'm cursed."

Vista, who had been reading a magazine that had done an article on Wards ENE recently, closed the Magazine and looked back and the symbiote-host who was still hugging her. "Go on."

"It's just uh... About a year and a half ago my Grandpa Patrick passed away and... He wasn't that old, and he was in really good health. It just came out of nowhere... And then a few months later people come into my apartment and... Killed my parents, and... And a year later, after I end up here, I almost lose Taylor and then you almost die and... I've never had real-life in-meatspace friends before. You... You're my first real my-age friend. I don't want to lose anybody else."

"Ashley? I'm the strongest Cape on the Wards and they almost never let me go on the front lines," Missy explained. "OF all the Wards ENE, I'm gonna be the _last_ one to die."

"Please don't joke like that."

"Look, Ashley," Vista said, "stuff like this happens. Bad stuff like that is how people get powers here. I think twenty attempted genocides in your lifetime has the record, but we've all been through stuff like that. You've just gotta... Look, I've been on the job for a while. You need to talk about this stuff? Come to me." Vista turned and returned Cuddlebug's hug. "Wanna sign up for an afternoon patrol with me? If we're lucky we'll get a route through Empire territory and then we can beat up some Nazis. That always makes me feel better."

"...I do still need to find some way to steal Mjolnir from Donar."


	8. What-If 1

**Snuggles' World of Amazing Fantasy**

A robed figure wrapped in chains stood on the surface of the moon, surrounded by spheres of crystalline energy. He turned to address some figure or figures that apparently only he can see.

"In another life," he said, "I was a man named Nick Fury. In this, I am The Unseen, who sees all. Other worlds, other times, Worlds of 'What-If?' "

The Unseen gestured to a cluster of spheres.

"You all have been observing a reality wherein young Ashley O'Leary is bonded to a scientifically and mystically modified symbiote and is shifted to another world unlike any that I could have thought possible before gaining the powers of The Watcher."

A sphere held in his hand then flashed with images-Ashley meeting Taylor, the spar with Shadow Stalker, the tragic death of Amelia Dallon, and Cuddlebug unknowingly imitating Spider-Man's greatest affirmation of heroism.

"However, this isn't the case in most realities," the Unseen continues. "In many, the poor child either dies young or lives long enough to undergo secondary mutation into a more stable form, albeit one with its own problems." Off to the side, a sphere briefly flashes the image of an older, red skinned Ashley visible only through the clear faceplate of a hazmat suit.

"But, in these infinite worlds of amazing fantasy, while the Mister Snuggles you know does not exist, other hybrid symbiotes are born and some do, on occasion, find their way to young Ashley."

The Unseen took another sphere. "For example..."

 **"What If Mister Snuggles was created by The Jackal?"**

"Miles Warren," narrated the Unseen, "also known as the Jackal, is a geneticist driven mad by the death of the young woman with which he was obsessed." The Unseen shows these unknown individuals images of Miles Warren and his infamous exploits-his experiments in cloning and the birth of Ben Reilly and the Gwen Clone. "Specializing in cloning, Warren attempted to perfect his craft, at first to restore Gwen Stacy to life but his madness soon progressed to an obsession with cloning Spider-Man for the sole sake of cloning Spiderman." The images shifted to hundreds of Spider-Men, Spider-Cide, the Scarlet Spider, and Kain in quick succession.

"Ultimately, he became obsessed with the genetic potential of Spiders in general," and then images of the Spider-Island incident, where almost all of Manhattan were turned into Spider-Monsters using Spider-Man's DNA, flow across the orb. Then comes images of Warren's cloned Spider-Princesses and the monstrous, humanoid spiders born from Warren's combination of Mutant and spider DNA and the X-Men and Superior Spider-Man dealing with the 'Spider-Girl' born from the same experiments.

"In one timeline, Warren, like Nathaniel Essex before him, learned of the genetic potential of the race known as the Klyntar symbiotes and, using a pilfered portion of Venom's biomass, attempted to create the ultimate spider using the DNA of every Spider-Totem that he could get his hands on."

"Of course," the Unseen continues, "I don't need the powers of a Watcher to tell you that experimenting with Symbiotes rarely ends well. Warren attempted to create a humanoid being, the Ultimate Spider-Man, but instead… Watch."

The images on the sphere then become a single ongoing narrative.

The Jackal scowled. His latest creation had come out all wrong. When he'd heard that Mister Sinister, the mutant obsessed evolutionist with whom he'd alternatively collaborated with and stolen from, had used some of the information he once provided to him to create a combined clone of Kraven the Hunter and the X-Men using a piece of the Carnage symbiote as a binder, he'd thought it simple enough to replicate.

He'd even improve upon it, using genetic samples that are already similar-the Spider-Men and Women, The Queen, and even some of his previous creations. The similarity in genetics, the nature of their powers, and their physiology should have created a perfect hybrid mutate with the full strength of them all, but instead…

Instead, he had a symbiote. One as inky black as the one from which he'd stolen the sample to bind the genomes together.

An amorphous, slithering blob of blackness was floating in one of his gestation tanks, seemingly oblivious to the world around it, flowing like hot wax in a lava lamp.

The Jackal cursed his impulsiveness. He knew Peter Parker's exact genetic code by heart at this point and could easily synthesize his genome as well as those of his clones. The same for the queen and her clones, but in his haste, he hadn't taken the time to properly sequence and archive his more recent acquisitions. With some of those spider-persons, it wasn't too big of a problem, but some of them were dead and gone with bodies missing or destroyed. Those samples couldn't be easily replaced.

Out of a combination of frustration, annoyance, and honest boredom, the Jackal tapped a finger on the glass.

This proved a mistake, as it led the symbiote inside to break through the tank and slay the Jackal, consuming his blood before fleeing his laboratory.

"Of course," The Unseen narrated, "that Jackal was, in fact, a renegade clone of the original Miles Warren, a fact which should surprise no one."

"It should come as no surprise that word of this soon spread through the Heroic Community: An attack on Agent Venom, a break-in at a former Oscorp genetics lab, and unseasonable mosquito bites among his associates quickly add together and draw the Amazing Spider-Man's attention."

The images in the sphere show Spider-Man investigating, finding the Jackal's laboratory, and discovering just what Warren had been up to.

Peter only had to briefly look at at the days-old corpse in one of Miles Warren's fursuits and to the shattered incubation tank to know what had happened.

Ignoring the scent of decay, he began searching the laboratory for any sign of what it had been that Warren had been working on: Peter had been through this song and dance enough times to know that whatever clone Warren had made would end up fighting him eventually.

After ten minutes of searching in drawers, under tables, behind beakers, and so forth Peter finally found a journal.

"Trashy poem about Gwen," Peter said as he flipped through the pages, "repeated rambling about ways to make me suffer and die. Plans for Spider-Flu 2.0… Gonna have to search the lab for that... Ah, here we go!" He said as he reached the last few pages. "Huh. He was trying to make his own Xraven… Great, my two least favorite things, clones and symbiotes. Venom as the base, me...Using my clones seems kind of redundant, Miles, Cindy, Jessica… Natasha? Warren must have gotten confused by the name. This is like, really bad though."

"Searching as both Peter Parker and as Spider-Man, the web-slinger diligently hunted clues to the whereabouts of this hybrid-creature."

"One night, he found the symbiote while patrolling Manhattan, hosted in one of the massive rats that characterize the city. He confronted it, and it fled its host, slithering from rooftop to rooftop.

"Spider-Man thought it fortuitous that the symbiote did not fight," The Unseen narrated, "but he need not have worried: Warren overstepped the limits of symbiote genetic adaptation. The more advanced and esoteric abilities of the Totems laid dormant. While the symbiote would no doubt be a holy terror in future years, for now, it's hosts were merely able to imitate the lesser powers available to Spider-Persons."

"Eventually, fleeing pursuit, the symbiote forced its way between the pains of the window of an apartment building and, knowing that Spider-Man still pursued it"

It was late at night, and Yuri O'Leary was panicking. Her beloved child Ashley was sick. This was not unusual, as Ashley had a rare genetic mutation that left her frail and with a weak immune system. However, Ashley usually did not get a one-hundred-and-five-degree fever in the middle of the night after going to bed healthy. Well, as healthy as Ashley gets.

She held an old rag to her daughter's mouth while the child had a severe coughing fit. When Ashley's painful sounding coughing stopped, Yuri pulled back the rag and saw the blood in it. This was the other reason she was worried. Ashley had never gotten so sick as to cough up blood.

Yuri's husband, Sean Wei O'Leary, was on the phone, trying to make an emergency call to the Physician who handled Ashley's case. His clinic was closed by now, but he was a specialist in Ashley's condition and was both discrete and sympathetic, a necessity. However, with how rapidly Ashley's condition was worsening...

"Mommy, I don't feel so good..."

That tears it. "Sean, get Ashley's coat. I'm taking her to the emergency room."

Sean winced. If blood tests were done, if a doctor or technician who wasn't… It couldn't be helped. Ashley might be in trouble if they went to the emergency room, but if she didn't see a doctor soon…

As Ashley's father got her coat and mother grabbed a surgical mask for Ashley to wear outside, neither of them noticed the inky black _thing_ slithering under the window until it lunged for Ashley.

Yuri screamed as Ashley was enveloped by the dark mass and emerged as a fanged, slobbering, many-limbed thing. Sean returned with Ashley's coat only to drop it in horror.

And then the glass of the window broke as the Amazing Spider-Man crashed through it and landed with a crouch.

The symbiote-possessed child snarled, leaped over the superhero, and dove out of the broken window. Spiderman turned to try and snag her with a web but couldn't get a clean shot that didn't risk harm to the child.

"Sorry about the window," he said lamely.

"You," Yuri said. "You're Spider-Man. The superhero."

"That I am," the hero said.

"That thing has my little girl," Yuri said with a strained calm. "She's only nine years old. She's very, very sick. And you've been her favorite superhero since she was four. I… I don't know what else to do… Help."

"You had me at 'little girl,' " the web-slinger replied. "I'll bring her home safe and sound, that's a promise."

Thwip. Like a streak of light, the Spider-Man swung out into the night to find young Ashley and the Symbiote that stole her away.

"Spider-Man quickly picked up the trail again," Said the Unseen, "the symbiote was clumsy, as it was still adapting to its first human host."

"He hunted it through the night, all across the city, finally catching up to in a cemetery. The Symbiote, still a feral conglomerate of fangs and limbs with the child trapped inside, was still, staring at a gravestone."

"Spider-Man, armored in a suit equipped with Parker Industries technology, prepared to use a noise-emitter to separate the symbiote from the child bound to it before he realized that he recognized the grave it was parked at."

"The grave of Benjamin Parker."

The second the symbiote engulfed Ashley, she found herself in a black void. No sound. No light. No touch. It was like she was floating submerged in a sea of nothing.

And then she heard the voices. So many voices, all at once. Voices full of pain, sadness, and anger.

 _"My fault - all my fault! If only I had stopped him when I_ _ **could**_ _have! But I_ _ **didn't**_ _\- and now - Uncle Ben - is dead..."_

 _"...Hobgoblin killed him over a damn costume, Ben! Over his stupid Porcupine suit!"_

 _"...There is nothing for me in the civilized world."_

 _"I... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I thought she_ _ **loved**_ _me... I couldn't_ _ **stop**_ _myself, I was so_ _ **angry**_ _... "_

 _"...But this thing between me and you? It is not forgotten... and it'll never be forgiven."_

 _"Take care of my "niece", Peter... tell her about... her Uncle Ben. "_

 _"...It seems that everywhere I go, problems start. "_

 _"...This is the exact place the Green Goblin killed Spider-Man. "_

 _"...But no matter how hard I try- -people- -die!"_

 _"You... you saved me."_

 _"That's... what... heroes... do..."_

 _"Wrong. Completely wrong. With great power comes great_ _ **guilt.**_ _"_

 _"Ever wish you had a big sister to ask advice for? Do you even remember you have one?"_

 _Again we have been hurt. Again we have been caged. Our only friend has been torn from us. The friend hates us now._

 _"Hey kid - what's wrong? Don't you understand? I saved you - you can't be -_ _ **NO!**_ _Oh, no, no, no - Don't be dead, Gwen - I don't want you to be dead!"_

"With Great Power," said the Unseen, "there inevitably comes Great Pain. Few know this better than those who take the Spider as a Totem. Unlike Carnage, Unlike the Symbiote Imperium, and Unlike the Symbiotes that I ordered pulled from the Grendel during the Vietnam War, this symbiote wasn't evil."

"The Jackal's clones inevitably carry the memories of their genetic donors. Symbiotes carry within them the memories of their parents."

"This artificial Symbiote, born from the Spider-Totems, was confused and scared by the painful memories it had inherited. It simply wanted to find a place where it could feel safe and, once it had a human host and thus, a context for its jumbled emotions," The Unseen finished, "it sought out a place where it could remember drawing strength."

"Hello!" Ashley called out. Still unseeing. "Are you there? I can hear you. Do you need help?"

"Hurt." Came a new voice from the void. "I… I hurt. Why? Why do I hurt? From where does the pain come from…?"

"I'm sorry you're hurt," Ashley called out again. "Would you like a hug?"

"What is hug?"

"Hugs are the best thing ever!" Ashley cheerfully chirped. "They always make me feel better when I'm scared or sad. C'mon, I just need to grab onto you."

Ashley felt a pressure around her. On instinct, she wrapped her arms forward around the main source of the pressure

And then she felt the pressure shift, feeling the warmest hug she'd ever experienced.

And she opened her eyes, seeing the gravestone of Benjamin Parker.

"Huh?" She asked. "How did I get here?"

She blinked and looked down at herself. Instead of the Spider-Man-themed pajamas she'd been wearing earlier that night, she was instead dressed in a solid black suit that clung tightly to her body. She patted herself down and, seeing that from boots to glove the suit was one piece, began to worry. Then she saw fangs before her eyes which peeled back and felt the cold night air on her face. And then it clicked in her head.

"I… Am wearing a symbiote."

"Yes, you are," came a voice behind Ashley. A voice Ashley knew very well. It was in one of her earliest memories. She'd taken every opportunity to learn about the man it belonged to.

Slowly, with wide eyes, Ashley turned around. Her eyes grew wider at the confirmation that the man who was, in her completely unbiased opinion, the single greatest hero in the multiverse, was standing behind her.

And then, Ashley belatedly realized that she didn't feel sick or tired anymore.

"I… I'm outside on my own. I don't feel sick… And I'm talking to Spider-Man." Ashley said with a voice dripping with awe. "This is the best day ever."

Spider-Man began to respond but was interrupted by Ashley suddenly shouting. "Wait! If I'm wearing a symbiote..." Ashley turned and thrust out her arms, held straight, palms up, in a certain iconic pose. Thwip! Two shots of web-fluid produced by the symbiote flew from her wrists out into the distance, striking a tree planted at the far end of the cemetery and frightening a squirrel. "And I have spider-powers. Best, best, best, _best_ day ever!"

"Little girl, I have to ask," Spider-Man began, "are you okay?"

"I have never been more okay ever for as long as I can remember," Ashley replied manically. "Do you need a sidekick?"

Spider-Man was silent for a moment. "If you want to be my sidekick," he said slowly, "then you have to wait until you're at least fifteen. And your parents have to say it's okay."

"Okay!" Ashley said happily.

"Speaking of," Spider-Man began, "I made a promise to your mom that I'd get you home safe and sound. And after that, I'm gonna see about getting some tests scheduled at Parker Industries' Xenobiology lab. Make sure that Symbiote isn't hurting you." Spider-Man typed something into the Web-Were integrated into his suit.

Ashley felt a shiver at the small of her back. "I think he's afraid of you… You're not gonna hurt him, are you?"

"...I'll be honest, I don't like symbiotes," Spider-Man admitted. "Especially not ones that are made by mad geneticists that are obsessed with cloning me. But if he's not hurting you, I won't hurt him."

"Okay," Ashley said. She saw no reason not to take Spider-Man at his word. "Wait, tests… Is that gonna mean like, blood tests… Or DNA?"

"Probably, why?"

"Uh..." Ashley began. "Um… Promise you won't tell anybody?"

Spider-Man straightened himself and was silent for a minute. Then he raised a hand "I promise."

"I… I'm a mutant."

"I see," said Spider-Man.

"Mommy and Dad made me promise to never let people find out. And I know what happens to mutants sometimes, and..."

Spider-Man kneeled down so as to be on eye-level with Ashley. "Your mom told me that I'm your favorite superhero."

"Yeah."

"So you know a lot about me?"

"Yeah."

"So you know that a lot of my closest friends are mutants, and that I'm an honorary X-Man, and that I was on the Avengers Unity Division, and that I even taught at the Jean Grey School."

"Yeah."

"And Peter Parker, head of Parker Industries?" Spider-Man said knowingly, "I know for a _fact_ that he doesn't have anything against mutants and that he'd never hire someone who did. And if that's not good enough, then you have my promise that nobody who I wouldn't trust with my life will so much as get a peek at the results from any tests we do to make sure that Symbiote you're wearing is safe."

"Oh-Okay," Ashley said, feeling better.

A moment passed while Ashley calmed. "So, how about-"

"Wait," Ashley interrupted. "I recognize this cemetery. There's something I have to do."

And then Ashley took off running.

"Wait!" Spider-Man shouted after her, moving to catch her before she got too far away and silently cursing that he was getting too old to be chasing kids.

He found her sitting at the foot of a more recent grave. Maybe a few months old, with a stone that had "Patrick O'Leary: Dedicated Worker, Loving Father and Grandfather _'I wanted a Viking Funeral, damn it!_ ' " carved upon it.

"Hey, Grandpa… It's me, Ashley. I'm here on my own. Guess what? I'm not sick! I'm fine, on my own. Not even tired. And I've got cool powers instead of the sucky powers I got cause I lost the mutant lottery… Now all I need to do is grow up and join the Avengers. Just like we talked about. I miss you. And I love you..."

Well, now Spider-Man felt he was intruding.

A moment later she stood up and turned back around. "Okay. I'm ready."

"Alright then," Spider-Man said. "Now, how'd you like a Spider-Back ride back to your apartment?"

"This day just keeps getting better and better..."

Spider-man allowed the girl to climb upon to his pack and wrap her arms around his neck and shoulders. Then he took to the skyline once more, heading back towards the girl's apartments. "Now, I think it's important to get those tests done as soon as possible, so I sent out a message. When we get to your apartment there should be some cars from Parker Industries there to take your family to the Baxter Building. When we're done with that, if your parents say it's okay, maybe I can teach you a bit of how to web-sling in the practice room I've got there."

It was at this point that Ashley reached a state known as excitement overload and could no longer verbally express how 'best' this day was.

As Spider-Man carried Ashley back to her parents, she regained her ability to talk and asked him. "So, I don't know if you remember this, but when I was super little I fell out of a window and..."

"And so, True Believers," concluded the Unseen, "we have the origin of the happiest Cuddlebug in the multiverse. One whose parents are alive and who formed a bond of mentorship with the hero she idolized."

*end*

Author's Note: In loving tribute to Stan Lee, who penned the words that opened our eyes to an entire universe of Amazing Fantasies. Excelsior!


	9. Just Because Hugs 2

"Come on, fuckers!" Vista shouted while brandishing a crowbar over an unconscious Kaiser, that Jack Slash guy, his Nine, Chitter and the Kraven Clone, what I'm pretty sure was a clone of Norman Osborn, and someone named March while an escaped-from-prison-again Lung and Bakada were running like hell. "I beat Space-Cancer, why the Hell would you think I couldn't beat you!"

And then the street underneath the running villains opened up into a giant bowl and then fell in. Five minutes later a badly bruised pair of Bad Boyz were rolled onto the villain pile off of a tendril of asphalt.

When I was sure the danger was over, I walked up and gave my friend a great big hug. "Vista, that was amazing."

"Uhuh. That's me, the Amazing Vista."

I giggled. "Amazing's taken."

"Don't care."

"But seriously," I said "with that many bad guys I thought you were a goner."

"I told you," she laughed, "I'm the last Ward that's gonna die."

*End*

For those who are up to date with Ward... And kept scrolling down... and read Wildbow's comments on Discord about today's chapter... You know exactly why I wrote this.


	10. Happy Easter

**Happy Easter**

The Wards ENE, sans Shadow Stalker, Cuddlebug, and Weaver, were assembled in the common room of their HQ one moderate spring Sunday.

It was Easter. Some of them wanted to be with the families(Though, not all of them *cough Vista* *cough, Gallant*) but there were a group of Fallen affiliated church groups in town and some violent crimes that fit the MO of Fallen affiliated criminals had been reported. There was no sign of Fallen Capes in town yet, but after what one particular group of Fallen had done to a Wards team who had yet to be rescued, the PRT had wanted all of the Wards accounted for and on-base until after it had been terminated that the Fallen didn't have any of their Masters in town or until the local authorities found evidence linking the Fallen activists to the crimes that had occurred(Giving them the right to arrest the activists, as so far all they'd proveably done was be annoying and rude and that wasn't technically a crime.)

"Five minutes left," Aegis said as he checked the clock. There was a deadline-they all had to be in by Noon today, and three wards werren't in yet.

Four minutes later, the masks on alarm came on. Shortly after, Weaver came in.

Behind her, Cuddlebug walked in. Holding a basket of Chocolate that was bigger than she was.

"Happy Easter!" Cuddlebug shouted up at the rest of the room. "Or whatever else you celebrate if you don't celebrate Easter. You can still have chocolate if you don't." She set the basket down in the middle of the room and then chucked a chocolate egg the size of a goose egg to Vista.

"That raises an interesting question," Browbeat said from his place by the couch. "Easter is a Christian Holiday. You, Cuddlebug, have previously stated that you are a worshiper of the ancient Norse god Thor, which is to say, a Pagan. Are you saying you observe Easter?"

"Modern Thorites acknowledge the existence of the Gods of other faiths," Cuddlebug said as she further distributed the chocolate. "It'd be silly not too after Hercules, Hercules human friend Amadeus Cho, Thor, Venus, Snow Bird, Amatsu-Mikaboshi, and Atum teamed up with Galactus, the Silver Surfer, and Sersi of the Eternals and went into space in a wooden ship that some Australian Gods made to go kill the Skrull Gods when a bunch of Skrull religious fanatics tried to take over the Earth becuase their Gods said to."

There was a moment of silence.

"Also, Mister Fantastic proved the existence of the Judeo-Christian God when he made a mathematical proof of the existence of souls and the afterlife and used it to physically go there to bring the Thing back to life. Said that God took the form of a Comic Book artists when they talked to him. As far as I can tell, all Religions are simultaneously true back where I'm from."

"...You're just fucking with us at this point, aren't you?" Clockblocker asked after a moment.

"Don't swear," Cuddlebug said, "and no. I promise I'm not making any of that up. Anyway, I figured that if we had to be cooped up in here for Thor knows how long, we might as well have some chocolate, so weaver and I stopped and bought some."

"This is high-quality chocolate," Gallant observed. "How could you afford this much?"

"Do you have any idea how much they're paying us?" Weaver asked. "You'd be surprised how much people are willing to pay for exclusive access to an entire universe of Cape culture."

Simultaneously to Weaver's explanation, Cuddlebug pulled back the gold foil from a chocolate egg, contorted her face into an impossibly wide jawed, horribly fanged nightmare image, set the chocolate egg onto her far too long, forked tongue, and used it to pull the egg into her mouth and bit down. she spent the next few moments chewing.

"You can be terrifying sometimes, you know that right?" Vista commented.

"Yep!" Cuddlebug replied cheerfully. "Now, Mister Snuggles got chocolate so he's happy now."

"He likes chocolate?" Kid Win commented?

"Yeah. He says that the chemicals that make brains so yummy to klyntar symbiotes are also in chocolate."

Clockblocker, who was just about to take a bite of chocolate, stopped, held the chocolate egg back, and stared at it. After a minute, he shrugged and took a bite anyway.

A few minutes later, the masks on buzzer went off again, and a little bit after that, Shadow Stalker was escorted into the room by an agent.

It was clear that she wanted to be anywhere but locked up in here right now.

After the agent left, Cuddlebug grabbed a chocolate egg from the basket with an ocktacle and moved to offer it to Shadow Stalker.

Shadow Stalker stared at it for a solid minute before grudgingly accepting the chocolate.

"So," Cuddlebug asked, "what is it that these fallen people do that's got us all cooped up in here instead of out there doing stuff?"

Everyone looked away awkwardly.

"So," Vista said quickly to change the subject, "What's your favorite movie?"

"Oh," Cuddlebug said, falling for it, "I really like the Princess Bride, but the version here is a little different, and..."


	11. Into the Snuggleverse

So people in Spacebattles asked about what it'd be like if Ashley was in Into the Spider-Verse.

I don't feel like writing the entire movie, but let's codify this thing.

"OK, for one last time... My name is Ashley O'Leary, and I _wasn't_ bitten by a radioactive spider. I mean, technically, I'm not even a Spider-Person. It's kind of weird that I'm here. I... I'm a mutant. Like the X-Men, but my powers are bad... I'm sick. _All the Time._ I've always loved Superheroes, becuase my earliest memory is getting rescued by Spider-Man after I fell out of a window of our top floor apartment. A little while ago, my parents... Some bad men were doing experiments with stuff and wanted to make something out of Mutant Growth Hormone. I don't know how they found out about me, but they figured I'd be perfect so they kidnapped me and my parents were killed in... About a year later, something went wrong and a symbiote they were experimenting on escaped and found me. I named him Mister Snuggles, and he helped me escape. Ever since... When I was sick in bed, knowing that Superheroes like Spider-Man were out there doing their best to make the world a better place made me feel better about being sick. I figured I might as well pay it forward. After all, with Great Power... I just wish that Mommy and Daddy could see me standing on my own two feet."

"Okay, so, if she's Gwen Stacy then we need to make absolutely sure that no routes through the city ever go near the George Washington Bridge."

"...Why?"

"Well, you see, uh... A few years ago, the Green Goblin... Uh... This is a bit awkward. Forget I said anything."

"So, there's an actual Spider-Man back in your world?"

"Yeah. Actually, there's three and sometimes a fourth one from the future. Also, there's been like five Spider-Women, two Scarlet Spiders, and a Silk but she's a hussy so she doesn't count. But none of the Spider-Men are Peter Parker. That'd be weird. I mean, Peter Parker in my world is a rich CEO and the original Spider-Man is his bodyguard. Why would he copy what Tony Stark did when nobody knew he was Iron Man? It'd be too obvious and he's supposed to be a genius."

"So... If we don't go home, we're glitch out and die? Huh... I always figured I'd die of pneumonia."

"You don't sound very concerned about... Anything, really."

"I mean, by the time I was eight I was pretty sure I wasn't gonna make it to 12. there's no point in being afraid of what's gonna happen regardless. You just... When the end is coming, you don't back down. Hey, Penni, can I ride your robot!?"

"No, Mister Snuggles. We aren't eating the Kingpin's brain. Or Scorpion's... Or anyones. I don't care that they're not ours, it's still gross!"


	12. Deadpool explains the differance

There's a white room.

Deadpool waked in, carrying a metal folding chair, which he opened, sat down, and sat upon.

"Hello, I am Detective Pikachu," Deadpool said with complete seriousness. "I'm here to explain some of the differences between Cuddlebug's home reality and the canon Marvel Comics, becuase with the latest chapter it should be pretty obvious that more Marvel characters are getting involved in the story eventually."

"First," the red-clad mercenary said with a raised finger, "Age of X-Man, War of the Realms, and Absolute Carnage are not happening in Cuddlebug's world. They're decent enough storylines if you're into that kind of thing, and Ratman's looking forward to Absolute Carnage since it's exactly what he's been saying for a while what a good Carnage story should be, but they drastically complicate what the Rat Man has planned so he's ignoring them. He might repurpose them after the fact."

"Second," Deadpool said while drawing a gun, "Becuase Rater really liked Spider-Man/Deadpool, I was present in the Earth 727 of what you all know of as the Go Down Swinging Arc, where Norman Osborn uses a modified Carnage symbiote to become the Red Goblin and does some fucked up shit. I ate some hits that otherwise would have gone to other people, so Flash Thompson hadn't completly overstressed the Anti-Venom healing after that first curb-stomp Red Goblin did to us and was able to just slightly pull threw, eventually making a full recovery."

"Third: Iron Doom ended differently. For more casual fans, it might surprise you that after Secret Wars 2015, after even being a literal God didn't bring Doom satisfaction, he abdicated his throne, got his face fixed, and tried to be a good guy by befriending Tony Stark. When Tony was beaten into a Coma at the end of Civil War II, Doom decided that the World needed an Iron Man and stole and customized Tony's then mark 51 armor and became the Infamous Iron Man. Rater really likes idea of long term villains making the effort to be better, so while Victor's not Iron Man anymore, a chance encounter with Gwenpool, who got a pep-talk from Iron Doom in her own series when she was trying to change for the better, prevented him from fully regressing to his old ways. He's back in charge of his country again since it was better off with him than without, but..." Deadpool waved his hand non-committally. "The only thing set in stone is that things are awkward between him and RICHHAAAAAEARDSSS! Since seeing if Doom would turn good if left alone was canonically one of the reasons the Richards family went on a cosmic vacation after Secret Wars and Doom knows this by now. He may or may not be teaching Val a bit of Sorcery at some point, Rater hasn't decided yet."

"And most importantly: Mephisto didn't find a way to escape that Vegas apartment he's trapped in yet, so Agent Coulson didn't come back wrong and Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider didn't have a bad-end out of God Damn nowhere. None of that is actually relevant to this story, but both of those things are things that seriously pissed Rater off so he's not including them in his story. Also, Mephisto can fuck himself."

Deadpool stood and then folded up his chair. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to see a horse about a chimichanga."

And then he walked off camera.


	13. Pay Up

"...And in that quark, there was the Microverse! The rare Microverse, the rattlin' Microverse, Microverse in the quark, quark in the proton, proton in the nucleus, nucleus in the atom, atom in the molecule, molecule in the gene, gene in the DNA, DNA in the virus, virus in the amoeba, amoeba in the germ, germ in the speck, speck in the eye, eye of the mite, mite on the hair, hair in the feather, feather on the wing, wing on the chick, chick in the yolk, yolk in the egg, egg in the bird, bird in the nest, nest on the leaf, leaf on the twig, twig on the branch, branch on the limb, limb on the bough, bough on the trunk, trunk of the tree, tree in the hole, hole in the bog and the bog down in the valley oh!"

Ashley finished with a jump and a clap. "Thirty-one verses, no stopping to breathe in the middle of a verse." She held out a hand. "Pay up!"

"I refuse to accept the Microverse as a thing that exists," Shadow Stalker dismissed.

"Uh-huh!" Ashley insisted. "It totally exists. It's not my fault your universe never discovered Pym Particles so you can't shrink down to visit."

"I swear to god you're making shit up," the vigilante mumbled.

"Now Shadow Stalker," Browbeat interrupted. I'd forgotten he was there. "The wager didn't say anything about the verses having to involve real thing." I wasn't sure where he'd kept his wallet, but he pulled it out and took out a dollar. "We all accepted the bet." Well, I hadn't.

Everyone else had produced their money. Seriously, we were all in costume. Where were they keeping their wallets?

"I mean, it's only a dollar," Gallant said when Shadow Stalker was still reluctant. Eventually, she coughed up, however, and Ashley was seven dollars richer.

"So, uh, what does 'Ratlin' mean?" Vista asked.

"I have no idea," Ashley admitted as she pocketed her winnings.

"You know she doesn't have to breathe, right?" Part of being a big sister was sometimes teaching the little sister hard lessons. Like not to scam your teammates.

Shadow Stalker was next to Ashley in an instant. I had to sit up just to make sure that she didn't do anything stupid. "You have three seconds to give me my money back."

"Hey," Ashley deflected calmly, "I said that I didn't need to stop and breathe when I was singing. Vista's the one who didn't believe me and started the bet."

For a second I thought Shadow Stalker was having a stroke, but eventually, she stomped off to her room. I have to admit, it brought a smile to my face to see my tormentor so frustrated.

"So," Ashley changed the subject, "who knows Drunken Sailor?"

Right now this is just Apocrypha but I reserve the right to go back and make it canon later.


	14. Cuddlebug explains Mutants

**Cuddlebug Explains Mutants**

Cuddlebug stood at the head of a conference room. She was wearing a robe, mortarboard, and overly large framed glasses over her normal hero costume. In one hand she held a spare pool cue she'd borrowed from the recreation room to use as a pointer and in the other the remote to a projector.

"Ladies and gentleman," the child said to the assembled Wards and Protectorate in the room, "it has been asked of me to explain the origin of people like me, the mutants. The scientific name for mutants is _Homo sapiens superior_ or just Homo Superior for short." Ashley paused for a second. "Calling mutants Homo Superior is really, really stupid though. First because no, we're not inherently superior to other humans or superhumans, and second, because it's bad science."

She pressed the button on the remote and a slide of two drawings of a chromosome. One was solid white, the other had a segment highlighted in red. She tapped the pool cue against the projection mat against the blank. "This is a chromosome from a baseline human." She tapped it against the other. "This is a mutant. The primary differance between a mutant and a baseline is a mutation of a gene found on the X and Y chromosome, causing it to become active."

She clicked again and it came up to a hand-drawn diagram of four people. One was normal, one had horns, one had a horn on one side, and one had horns but was standing next to a hazard symbol. "The inert, dormant gene is located in all of humanity, while the active form is found only in a subset of humanity." Cuddlebug tapped the normal drawing. Then, she tapped the horned drawing. "The mutant gene is found in dominant," she tapped the half horned, "recessive," she tapped the horned with a hazard symbol, "and latent forms."

"The latent form usually behaves like the recessive version, meaning that it will only normally activate if you inherit it from both parents or if you have it and one of the other active forms," Cuddlebug explained, "but it can also activate in response to extreme physiological stress. For example," Cuddlebug clicked the remote, causing a drawing of a man in a yellow suit with blue trunks and a blue 'W' on his chest. "The Whizzer, a superhero from the forties, gained superhuman speed when his latent mutant-gene activated because he got bit by a cobra and then someone tried to cure the venom by transfusing mongoose blood into him."

It was at this point that Clockblocker raised his hand. "Yes, question?"

"...Was it a magic mongoose?"

Cuddlebug shook her head. "As far as I know, no. It wasn't magic, it wasn't radioactive, it wasn't from space and wasn't a god-mongoose. Just a normal mongoose."

"...Why would that cure snake venom?"

"Look," Cuddlebug said, "it was the forties. People did stupid stuff in the forties. Anyway," Cuddlebug went on, "in addition to the latent version being triggered by outside stressors, certain dangerous drugs and certain kinds of radiation, as well as extreme distress, can make the other kinds come out before they would have naturally."

"The mutant gene was originally called the Essex gene, after Nathaniel Essex, the man who discovered it, but nowadays it's typically called the X-Gene."

"The X-gene works by coding for a substance called 'mutation factor.' That activates some genes, turns others off, and even alters a few. This forms a gene complex that is unique to every individual mutant, and the products of the genes in the complex combine with and modify the mutation factor to produce the chemical cause of a mutant's powers and/or unique physiology."

Cuddlebug clicked the remote, bringing up a drawing of a man shooting red light from his eyes and another shooting something light blue and fuzzy from his hands.

"The complexes formed by the X-gene, which confusingly enough are also often called 'X-genes' despite being entire complexes," Cuddlebug began, "as they're based on pre-existing genes, certain powers can run in families: For example, Cyclops and Havok are brothers and they both have powers based on absorbing ambient energy and using it to make a different kind of energy come out of their body."

"Since when is blue cotton candy energy?" Shadow Stalker interrupted.

"It's not cotton candy, it's plasma," Cuddlebug corrected.

"Well, then you suck at drawing."

"And you can shut up," Cuddlebug dismissed and then clicked. It popped into a drawing of a man with blades coming out of his knuckles, another man with fangs and claws, and a woman with the ears, fur, and tail of a cat. "Also, there are some genes that don't do anything by themselves and will automatically be integrated into the mutant gene complex, and furthermore will dominate the complex. The Feral gene, for example, when present in a mutant, will mean that their powers will always be some combination of claws, a healing factor, and animal-like personality or appearance."

The next slide was a man with what were apparently meant to be tattoos on his arm, a man with a banded metal arm, and a man with a ridiculously tall black beehive hairdo.

"Because the complex is created by altering DNA, those altered genes can be passed down. In most cases, they don't do anything by themselves, but once the X-Gene activates those altered genes will be used in the complex and make stronger powers."

She tapped the tattooed man. "Daken not only has the same healing factor, senses, and similar bone-claws to his father but also has bones that are even harder than what Wolverine has under the metal plating and pheromones that let him influence people's emotions. Too bad he's a diagnosed psychopath who only cares about like, three people."

She tapped the man with the beehive. "Professor X had powerful telepathy. His bastard son Legion can create entirely new minds that all have their own high-level powers... of course, this also means he has untreatable schizophrenia and dissociative personality disorder with thousands of alters, so... Trade-off."

She tapped the man in the middle with the metal arm. "Cable isn't just a second-generation mutant, he's the son of two mutants and combines their powers: Jean Grey's telekinesis and Cyclops' energy powers combine into... basically every kind of psychokinesis at an absurdly high level." Ashley paused. "He can't use it very often because he has a virus that slowly turning him into a Robo-zombie but like, there was the one time he didn't have to worry about it and he manhandled the Silver Surfer while holding a flying city in the air."

Triumph was the first Protectorate to raise his hand with a question. "Who is this Silver Surfer?"

"The Silver Surfer was the Herald of Galactus and is one of the users of the Power Cosmic," Cuddlebug explained. "I explained how the old pagan gods are all real in my world? The Surfer is stronger than most of them. By a lot."

She clicked and the slide was a picture of a little blonde boy. "It's also possible for mutants to combine with other super-powered genetics. Reed Richards and his wife Susan Storm-Richards of the Fantastic Four are both Cosmic Ray Mutates, which is to say they had the genetic potential to gain superpowers and these powers were activated by exposure to cosmic rays... But they also have the recessive version of the X-Gene and they both passed it down to their son Franklin, who also inherited the potential to get powers from Cosmic Rays. Latent Cosmic rays in his mom's body activated both his X-Gene and his cosmic potential which combined and made him a Universal Class reality Warper. He's usually considered to be the strongest mutant on Earth, if not the strongest mortal in the universe."

And now Kid Win had a question: "So if mutant powers are based on DNA and run in families, does that mean that if one of your parents was a mutant they'd have your disability?"

"Well, technically my dad was a mutant, my grandpa, too, but they had the latent version of the gene so they never got powers and didn't show up on most gene trackers because they never encountered a stressor that brought it out," Cuddlebug corrected, "and not nessesarily. Since half of your DNA comes from each parent, it's possible that I just got a bad combination of genes from Mommy and Daddy and they'd have had good powers if they had active X-genes."

"And that brings me to another point," Cuddlebug continued, "the three active forms of the X-Gene are known to mutate into each other."

Cuddlebug clicked the remote, showing the greek Letters Alpha, Beta, Omega, A second Omega with a plus next to it, and an Epsilon.

"Mutant powers are classified in a greek letter system. I only know a couple of them off the top of my head and there are some terms that are decently used but aren't official. Alphas," she said while tapping the matching letter, "are mutants with high level and decently useful powers. Direct combat applications are common and sometimes full control of the power and being able to pass as human are given as characteristics but that's not consistent. Beta," tapping Beta, "is very vaguely defined but sometimes means combat-capable mutants that can't pass as human or that aren't as powerful as Alpha class mutants."

Cuddlebug tapped the Omega symbol. "This is the one most people know about. Omega class mutants are often misunderstood to be ultra-powerful mutants, and most of them are, but strictly speaking, it means that one or more of your powers are limitless. Mister Immortal of the Great Lakes Avengers can't die. Even if you completely destroy his body it'll just come back together in a few minutes. Jean Grey's telepathic abilities... you might be able to surpass her in the short term, but she can just practice and get stronger. Only another Omega level telepath has a chance of reliably beating her." She tapped the other Omega, with the plus. "Beyond Omega goes past limitless into infinite. Cable is an Omega level Psychokinetic bordering on reality warping. Franklin Richards is an Omega Level Reality Warper who uses every kind of reality waring at once with powers that function on a universal scale and has dozens of other Alpha and potentially Omega level powers besides. To give a rough comparison, the Silver Surfer, who is more powerful than most of Earth's Gods, was a Herald of Galactus and is thus basically an ant compared to Galactus and Cable was able to fight him okay while multi-tasking. A potential grown-up version of Franklin from the future showed up and Galactus was _his_ herald. That's the differance between Omega and Beyond Omega."

"There's some overlap between Alpha Level mutants and Omega level mutants, so you can be both, but I don't know what the cutoff point or points of intersection are: I know that Jean Grey and Franklin Richards are both considered to be Alphas as well as Omegas. Also, all Beyond Omega class mutants are considered Omega class by default."

Finally, Cuddlebug tapped the Epsilon. "Now, I'm pretty sure this isn't an official designation, but it's used often enough that I'll mention it: Epsilon level is used to refer to people like me, the bottom of the barrel of sucky powers. Powers that are useless, non-existent, or actively harmful, usually with a crippling disability or severe deformity. Beak, a mutant whose power is that he looks like a chicken... That's it. He just looks like a chicken, would be an Epsilon if it was official."

Cuddlebug paused for questions, but no one had one. After a moment where the only sound was that of Armsmaster's and only Armsmaster's note-taking, the young mutant continued.

"Now, mutants only entered public awareness in the past few decades," Cuddlebug, "but certain governments have known about them for much longer and the 'Essex Gene' was first discovered in the 19th century," Cuddlebug took a minute to crack her neck. "In addition to that, there's proof that mutants have been around for thousands of years, despite the claims of idiots that we're the next step in human evolution. There's even confirmation that at least one Ancient Egyptian dynasty had mutants in its royal family. A mutant named Selene, whose power is that she's basically a psychic vampire and she also knows magic, claims to be over fourteen thousand years old," Cuddlebug said, but then she clicked the next slide, "but the earliest confirmed mutant is En Sabah Nur, a bandit-turned-slave who rebelled and deposed the Pharaoh Rama-Tut, seizing the throne himself, in Ancient Egypt over five thousand years ago."

The slide was a drawn picture of an imposingly tall bald man with grey skin, solid red eyes, and thick, blue lips that had similarly colored lines from the corners of his mouth tracing his upper jaw to his ears. He was dressed in a simple powered armor with cables from the back stretching to plug into his gauntlets, and he had what seemed to be an "A" for a belt buckle.

"We know he's five thousand years old because there are hieroglyphics from back then depicting him," Cuddlbug explained, "and we know that he's a mutant because he's still alive and he shows up on mutant detecting devices. En Sabah Nur, which means 'the first one' in an ancient language that no one speaks anymore, was not only the Pharaoh of Egypt for a time but has been a major figure in many parts of the world and it's history: In addition to his time as Pharaoh, he possed as the Egyptian God Set, the Indian Goddess Kali, and the Aztec God Hu...hu-it..."

"Huitzilopochtli?" Armsmaster supplied.

"Yeah, him," Cuddlebug finished. "He posed as those gods and several more while traveling the world and visiting those places... Which, understandably, means that a lot of those gods hate him, but he's a superhumanly strong, superhumanly tough, psychic immortal shapeshifter with complete mastery of highly advanced technology belonging to cosmic space-gods so I don't think there's much they can do to deal with him permanently. Nowadays, he mostly calls himself Apocalypse."

"So, he's a bad guy, right?" Vista asked. "Becuase he sounds like a bad guy."

"Oh, hell yeah he's evil," Cuddlebug confirmed. "He doesn't think he is, but the bad guys never think they're bad guys. He was a Social Darwinist before Darwin's ancestors met. He believes that the strong deserve to live and that anyone who isn't willing to fight to prove themselves or isn't strong enough to win in constant battle deserve to die. How evil is that?"

It was at that point that Shadow Stalker checked the wall clock to see how long they'd been there.

"Apocalypse's influence has been felt throughout human history," Cuddlbeug finished, "and he has surfaced several times to plot various things, often involving the use of the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death, who are usually people he's found and used his alien technology to boost the powers of, then mind-controlled... But some people think he's pulling a long con."

"Could you explain that?" Miss Militia asked.

"Well," Cuddlebug began, "his goal is supposedly to wipe out humans and other non-mutants, who he believes to be unfit in comparison to mutants, and turn the world into a wasteland where the survivors will be forced to grow strong and fight for the right to live... But he's been around for thousands of years. He's had access to deadly diseases and weapons of mass destruction for centuries longer than anyone else. He could have easily done it by now, and he's been defeated surprisingly easy despite a really impressive showing the first time he showed up in the modern age. And uh... a lot of his schemes end up helping the heroes who oppose him in the long run..."

"So, some people think he might be scheming towards some greater goal," Weaver supplied, "and is only playing at being the villain."

"Yeah. It's mostly fringe groups, lunatics, and mutant supremacists that think that but there's enough evidence that it could be true, even if it's a slim chance, that it makes me uncomfortable to think about," Cuddlebug admitted.

"You seem to know an awful lot about this guy," Gallant observed.

"Yeah," Cuddlebug said as she put her hand behind her head, "I like to learn about Superheroes and you can't learn about Heroes without learning about villains. A lot of people overlook Apocalypse because he's usually beaten by one or two X-Men affiliate teams whereas people like Doctor Doom or Thanos often have to be fought but alliances of all the major teams and independents, but whenever I see something about him in my research I feel drawn to it. I don't know why," she finished with a shrug.

"Anyway," Cuddlebug said with a click, "other examples of ancient mutants are Romulus and Remus: The twins who founded Rome. I don't know about your world, but in my world, they're Feral Gene Mutants." Cuddlebug paused for a moment so her audience could take in the childish drawing of a man and a woman in front of the Roman Colosseum. "Uh, they're still alive in my world, too. Regenerative healing factors let you live for a long, long time. Also, Remus is a girl. I don't know why the myths change that. Romulus is kind of a tool and that's all I know about them."

Cuddlebug clicked again, and the picture was replaced with a drawing of a man with blue skin and fins on his ankles as well as a drawing of a baby. "Mutants aren't the only people with the X-Gene," Cuddlebug added. "In addition to us, there are also the changelings, who are born with powers instead of them activating at somepoint as they grow up, and Atlantans who have it latently. Changelings are otherwise indistinguishable from mutants, but Atlanteans have a uniform set of powers and physical changes: Unlike mutants, there is enough differance to call Atlanteans a different species, scientific name _Homo mermanus_ , not to be confused with actual mermaids. They'll show up on less precise mutant detectors."

Cuddlebug clicked and switched to a slide showing a drawing of a muscular man with pointy ears, black hair, and wings on his feet. He was dressed only in a green speedo. "Atlanteans are sometimes born with or naturally develop abillities beyond the normal abillities of their kind, which are tied to their X-Gene, and can interbreed with humans. Empowered Atlanteans are considered mutants and scan as such. Namor the Sub-Mariner," Ashley said with a tap to the drawing, "the current King of Atlantis is both a hybrid and an Atlantean Mutant. Currently, he's the only Mutant in Atlantis. Atlanteans and Atlantean hybrids are very long-lived," Cuddlebug finished, "Namor fought for the allies in World War Two as part of the Invaders, a group of Superhuman fighting Hitler's armies of vampires, mad science abominations, and knock-off Super Soldiers, and hasn't noticeably aged since then."

There was a brief beat. "Also, apparently he's something called a 'manwhore,' " Cuddlebug added matter-of-factly.

This triggered Clockblocker to fall to the ground and start laughing uncontrollably. "Oh god... That delivery," he said once he got himself under control.

"Oh...Okay," Cuddlebug said as she got back on topic. She clicked the remote one last time. "And that's really all I've got," she concluded. "If there are no questions I should get this stick back to the rec-room."

The final slide was simply a bold **The End**

AN: This is tentatively canon, though its place in continuity is iffy at this time. Ashley's explanations are a mixture of actual canon and extrapolatory headcanon and are the assumptions for this story.


	15. Cuddlebug Explains Cloned People

**Cuddlebug Explains Heroes and Villains(clones)**

"Okay," Cuddlebug said as she once again stood at the head of a conference room in her 'scholarly' outfit, "Director Piggot said that my last lecture wasn't actually useful at the moment and threatened to doc part of my consultation pay until Weaver showed her the part of my contract that said she couldn't do that. Then she talked to the deputy director for a little bit." Cuddlebug shrugged. "Anyway, I've got something a little more useful."

Cuddlebug hit the clicker and the projector showed a drawn image of a man in red armor with a helmet and a purple cape never to a drawing of a man in silver armor but no cape. "One of the clones in the city was made from Magneto, the Master of Magnetism. Now, the clone, Eisenhardt, seems like a good guy, but... The real Magneto has gone from bad to good and back so many times that it's better to be safe than sorry. The real Magneto was a Holocaust survivor, he was kept at Auschwitz and was a child during the war. This strongly influenced him and when he learned that his powers were the result of being slightly different from normal humans he feared that mutants would be rounded up and genocided just like the jews, Romani, homosexuals, and disabled people in Nazi-controlled territories were."

Cuddlebug sighed. "Ironically, Magneto decided that the only way to prevent Mutant genocide would be for mutants to dominate baseline humanity: Magneto is the one who coined the name 'Homo Superior' and decided that mutants needed to take over the world and either marginalize or enslave baseline humanity. He himself has been compared to Hitler more than once. Magneto and his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants—that's the actual name he picked for them, by the way, have probably done more harm than good in for the mutant cause ever since. Sometimes, Magneto tries to be a good guy, but he always falls back to mutant supremacist terrorism eventually. Apparently, he's bipolar or something. So you know, keep an eye on Eisenhardt."

"Magneto is an Alpha Level Mutant and may be an Omega Level Mutant with the ability to manipulate the energies of the Electromagnetic Spectrum up to an including the entire Earth's electromagnetic field. This allows him to fly, telekinetically manipulate most metals—even living organisms by playing with the iron in their blood cells—up to thousands of tons with control fine enough to rearrange iron at the molecular level. He can also conjure blasts of lightning, create force-fields, and he always knows which ways are north and south by sensing the earth's magnetic poles." Cuddlebug stopped for a minute. "Oh," she continued as if remembering something, "he's also resistant to telepathic attacks, and he's a super genius in areas of physics and genetics. The helmet that the real magneto uses has technology that boosts his resistance to telepathy but I don't know if the clone would have made a helmet that can do that yet."

Clockblocker raised a hand. "Uh, the guy with magnet powers is bipolar? I'm sorry, but that sounds like a terrible joke."

"I know, right?" Cuddlebugg agreed. "Anyway," She said with a click that changed the image to still frame of a girl with a long bushy tail. "We've met an evil clone of Squirrel Girl, who Weaver named Chitter because heroes naming villains is a thing here." Cuddlebug actually seemed a little confused by that. "The real Squirrel Girl... She has the tail of a squirrel and the proportionate physical abillities of a squirrel which means she's really strong and really fast. She also has retractable claws in her fingertips and retractable bone spike hidden behind her knuckles. They're meant for climbing but they're still very dangerous, and she can talk to squirrels. I have no idea how to beat her, you'll have to ask how Weaver beat Chitter."

Cuddlebug clicked onto the next slide, showing the boy who'd joined the Undersiders in a security camera image next to a drawing for a girl version of him with long hair and a wool cap with eyes drawn on it. "Bruiser is a boy version of Bruiser, who was one of the Runaways. I'll be honest, I don't know much about the Runaways beyond that Chase Stein was the leader and that he and a girl named Nico were among the teenage and young adult Heroes that Arcade kidnapped and locked in one of his murder worlds for a few months. I do know that Bruiser is a psychic whose psychokinesis takes the form of an aura that gives her... And him... Superhuman strength and toughness. She's been compared to the Incredible Hulk more than once and there's a video of her online picking up a five-hundred-foot tall demon thingy while on a caffeine high so I'm inclined to believe that."

Cuddlebug clicked onto an image from the Bank's security camera of Ashley herself trying to punch the Super Skrull's Thing fist with her own Thing fist. "I broke my arm doing that. It hurt like hell," she shared. "Anyway, Super Skrulls are Skrulls, a race of aliens with powerful shapeshifting abillities that have tried to invade my Earth several times but have always been foiled by the superhumans of my homeworld. To try and match them, the Skrulls studied superhumans and tried to replicate their abillities, creating the Super Skrulls. The original Super Skrulls were cyborgs, but the later generations use genetic engineering, magic, and the original origin when possible to more accurately recreate abillities. Since Bruiser recognized the Super Skull at the bank as a clone of the rogue one at the who was with the Runaways."

"That means," Cuddlebug began, "that they like to switch between being a boy and a girl and have the powers of the Fantastic Four but can only use one power at a time," she continued. "That means flight, invisible forcefields that can be shaped into anything and used as a second way of flying, turning invisible, pyrokinesis, superhuman strength and toughness, and being able to stretch almost infinitely. But only one at a time."

She clicked again to show the image of the hunter who'd been working with Chitter. "Kraven the Hunter is an old Russian nobleman who gets off on hunting dangerous animals, including the most dangerous game of all..."

"Man?" Literally everyone else in the room asked at once in a bored tone.

"No," Cuddlebug replied, " _Spider_ -Man. Kraven puts a lot of value in the idea of totems and spirit animals and stuff like that and is very much an old school 'respect your prey, respect the animals, don't over-hunt because these are majestic creatures, and above all hunt by your own skills and accept the risk of the game' type hunter. Spiders are scary and pound for pound are some of the deadliest and most successful hunters in the world." Cuddlebug waved her hand for emphasis. "Name a kind of predator and there's at least one kind of spider that hunts that way. Kraven figured that a man with extreme superhuman physical attributes modeled on a spider would be a worthy adversary and that if he beat Spider-Man that would prove that he was the best hunter in the world. It became an obsession."

"Kraven's powers are mostly physical and include low levels of superhuman strength, toughness, speed, healing, and stamina as well as improved longevity and a really good sense of smell, but those are dependent on a bunch of potions and serums made from jungle herbs from all over the world so I don't know how much of that would have carried to his clone. He's also an expert at hand to hand combat, simple melee weapons like knives and spears, and archaic hunting weapons. He's also pretty good with rifles, but he very rarely uses them unless he's like, hunting dinosaurs or he's trying to tranq something and bring it back alive."

Cuddlebug clicked onto her last slide. It showed a CCTV still of a man with an incredibly pale blue-grey, almost white, skin and jet black hair that shined blue in the light. He had red eyes, a fanged mouth, pointed ears, and a flat, batlike nose.

"I actually saw this guy, fighting a man I later learned was named Skidmark, in my first couple of nights in town when I was trying to figure out what was going on and where I was... I could have gotten involved. I probably should have gotten involved. I think I could have taken him and I found out later that he killed that Skidmark guy..."

Cuddlebug stopped and looked at the floor for a bit. She was roused from her guilt by inaction by Shadow Stalker scoffing. "Don't feel bad. Skidmark was a low-class drug dealer who got high on his own supply. He was basically living garbage."

"But he was still a person, right?" Cuddlebug replied. "Someone had to have loved him. He had a mom once, right?"

"You can't possibly be that ignorant," Shadow Stalker dismissed. "Someone like him isn't even human."

"...You know," Cuddlebug said as she slowly cocked her head from one side to another, "I really don't like it when people arbitrarily decide that someone isn't a person and that they deserve to die because they arbitrarily aren't people." She slowly cocked her head back the other way. "I mean, you've got a lot of nerve saying something like that around a mutant. Please don't do it again. Mister Snuggles really wants me to give brain-eating a try," Cuddlebug said in a deeper, more echoey voice through an overly large mouth full of fangs, "and right now I'm _really_ tempted to do it once just to make him shut up about it."

Shadow Stalker mumbled for a moment. Armsmaster scribbled something about getting Cuddlebug counseling down into his notes. The tension was too great for anyone else to say or do anything at the time.

Cuddlebug went through the motions of a deep breath and returned to normal. "Anyway, this guy who the PRT calls Nosferatu is cloned from Michael Morbius the Living Vampire. He's an expert hematologist who came down with a rare blood illness and the experimental treatments that cured him also mutated him, giving him superhuman strength and toughness, enhanced speed, fangs and claws, psychic powers that let him mesmerize people and levitate, and a healing factor but also made his eyes ultra light-sensitive, removed most of the pigment from his skin so he burns easy, and altered his biology so he needs to feed on fresh human blood. He's also psychologically dependant on human blood. He's made serums that can take care of his biological need to feed but they don't always work on the psychological aspect, as well as temporary cures for his condition." Cuddlebug sighed. "When he does feed on human blood, he usually tries to feed non-lethally and only on bad guys, but he can't always get the blood out without killing them and sometimes he makes mistakes about who's good and who's bad. If this was the real Morbius, I'd say try to recruit him with offers of resources to make his serums and research a cure for his vampirism or access to fresh human blood guilt-free when he can't go on a serum alone, because the real Morbius is mostly a good guy in a bad sitch, but with the evil Squirrel Girl clone I can't be sure that the clone isn't as evil as a real vampire."

"I don't have a slide for Jorogumo. I don't know anything about who she was cloned from, but since she's captured and in that asylum now I don't think I need to mention anything and that's all the people who people we know about around here were cloned from. If there are no questions I'd kind of like to go take a nap now."

Cuddlebug clicked one last time, and as before the last slide simply said **The End**


	16. The Livestream

**The Livestream**

I tried to make myself comfortable on the chair they had me sitting in. It was really more for show than something to sit in for a long while. The bright lights in the room didn't help either, and I had to look into the camera they had hooked up to that computer... At least when I wasn't checking the monitor for questions.

"And we're live," The technician at the computer announced.

"Okay, hello internet people," I said as Mister Snuggles adjusted our eye lenses so the lighting didn't seem so bad. "I'm Cuddlebug. Weaver's busy fighting crime right now. I don't know why we didn't postpone this. Anyway, there's been some talking about Vista mentioning 'My world' during the Mall attack the other day, so I'm just gonna come out and say it: I'm what the PRT calls a Case 81: A cape from another universe." Already a few questions and comments were coming in on the stream chat. "The PRT initially wanted to keep it secret because there's some stuff from my world that can be a little scary if you're not used to it—like, in your world, Bram Stoker wrote Dracula as fiction. In my world, Bram Stoker collected the letters and writings of the actual people who actually lived through that because the actual Dracula is an actual vampire and I swear on Thor's glorious golden locks that I'm not making that up."

Several people made comments of one or two words that mostly invoked cows going to the bathroom, though 'The_Fourth_Reich' called me an idiot barbarian child and claimed that Thor had red hair.

"Okay, chat mods? Can we eject The_Fourth_Reich from chat? I mean, for one that's obviously a Neo-Nazi and my stream, my rules, I don't want to engage with that, for two 'Idiot Barbarian Child' is what that G-Shaft Nazi Cape called me, and for Three, Thor had red hair in _this_ universe. In _mine_ , he's blonde." I blinked as something occurred to me. "Also, seriously, what the Hell Donar? You don't have anything better to do than troll my PRT Q&A Livestream?"

More comments came up. "Yeah, all the Old Gods are real where I'm from," I explained. "All of them. Like, almost every religion is true. Not all of the Old Gods are actual Gods though. Anyway, I'm gonna get some basic questions out of the way: Weaver isn't really my sister, she's my foster-sister but her family is working on adopting me. She's from here. We don't use the term 'Parahuman' where I'm from and powers don't really work the same way as far as I can tell. I'm not really a Tinker and I didn't make Mister Snuggles. I know I already replied to comments but official question taking starts now. You can ask me about me and Mister Snuggles or about my world, but no personal questions please, I've got a secret ID for a reason."

I leaned back in the chair and pulled my legs up so my knees were up in my chest. I don't know why but that's always felt the most comfortable for me. I took note of the comments coming in.

"XxVoid_CowboyXx asked 'So what do you call capes if you don't use Parahumans?' Well, Void_Cowboy, where I'm from we mostly just call people with powers superhuman. There are different kinds of superhuman though. Most Superhumans are either Mutants or Mutates, but there's a bunch of other kinds that are a bit too complicated and would take me all day to explain."

"Tinker_Girl_2000 asked 'So, if you didn't make Mister Snuggles than what is he?' " I had to think about it for a minute. "He's an organism called a Klyntar Symbiote. They live in symbiosis with other organisms, making the hosts stronger in exchange for feeding on their hormones and absorbing their DNA and knowledge. My inherant powers make me a perfect host for a symbiote." Mister Snuggles whispered something into my ear. "Also, they aren't actually boys or girls. Mister Snuggles says that the most accurate pronoun for Symbiotes would be 'it' but it sounds really rude to call someone with thoughts and feelings an 'it' so I call him a 'him.' He doesn't mind."

"Lovestruck_Starchild asked 'Do you have any crushes on anyone?' Lovestruck, I'm TEN!" I shouted as I set my legs down and sat up straight. "I don't even know if I like boys or girls yet. Ask me in like, five years or something. I'm not really concerned with that kind of thing, anyway."

"Void_Cowboy asked a follow-up question, 'what's the differance between a mutant and a mutate.' So Super Powers are genetic where I'm from. It used to be that Mutant meant people who were born with powers and mutate meant people who developed super-powered mutations after being born, but nowadays mutant refers specifically to people with something called the X-Gene while Mutate refers to people got powers from external mutations and people who inherited those mutations from their parents. Mutates are considered to be humans, but years of people in positions of power failing at Evolutionary Science have gotten Mutants reclassified as a separate human subspecies called Homo Superior. I think this is stupid for dozens of reasons. I am a mutant." I formed a Thing-Fist on my right hand and raised it for emphasis. "And I will punch anyone who calls me Homo Superior right in the groin. And while we're at it, 'Mutie' and 'Genejoke' are considered slurs against mutants where I come from. Say either where I can hear you and it's," I made another thing fist and used one to punch the palm of the other, "right in the groin."

I pointed at one of the grown-ups off camera. "If any of you are hearing a thumping sound, it's because the PR guy overseeing this is banging his head on the wall." Really he was just glaring at me. "I'm probably gonna get lectured about the groin punching thing later, but the point stands."

"Flippinmad asked how I beat The Azn Bad Boyz... Uh, Jorogumo mostly beat herself, Oni Lee it mostly just acting on instinct—I've got ESP that lets me know when I'm in danger and reflexes that go automatically, Lung I just kinda punched him till he fell down, and Miss Militia and Vista showed up and dealt with Bakuda."

"Point... Okay, new rule, no questions about Panacea or the Bank fight, please. I... Uh... I'm sorry, I..." I wasn't crying. And even if I was, nobody could tell because I was wearing a mask.

"N-Next question... No, Dragon_Fan, I'm not that concerned about privacy when it comes to Mister Snuggles. I had health issues growing up. On a good day, I could maybe stand on my own for an hour so I'd be under constant supervision. I never really had that much privacy so it's not something I value outside of important things like my secret identity, and the benefits of being bonded with Mister Snuggles are more than worth it. I mean, I couldn't be a superhero without him." I felt a little better after that question.

"Sailor_Weeb asks what my favorite food is... Uh, Bacon." I answered quickly. "And Chocolate. And sweets in general. And pizza with mushrooms and anchovies... Which kind of sucks because no-pizzerias around here use anchovies. If anyone who owns Pizzeria in or around Brockton Bay is watching, start using anchovies. Please. I'll give you a free endorsement. Don't make me go all the way to NYC just to get a decent slice."

I scrolled back through the chat log to see if I missed any questions. "Uh, I'm seeing a lot of comments about my accent, yes, I am originally from my World's Manhattan."

I scrolled back down to the new comments. "I'm seeing a couple of questions about the history of Superhumans in my world. Uh, mutates are mostly a recent thing but there have been magic users, mutants, and aliens for basically forever... Yes, magic is real in my universe, deal with it. There's a couple of mutants alive today who claim to be thousands of years old and survived to the modern day through various means, but the only one who can prove it is a Supervillain who goes by the name Apocalypse who was a Pharaoh in Ancient Egypt over five thousand years ago but that's a lecture for another time." And one I already gave. "In terms of Superheroes though, they've only been around for over a hundred years and been a major thing since the forties—actually the most famous Superhero in the world, Captain America, led a team of heroes from the US, England, and Atlantis against Hitler's armies of vampires and Super Soldiers." checked the chat. "Yes, Atlantis is real where I'm from. Deal with it."

I noticed that Void_Cowboy left another comment. "Yeah, I guess my world does sound like a bad comic book. But you're the world that doesn't have a nature preserve full of dinosaurs in the south pole, so really, which universe is really the bad one?"

I was seeing a lot of questions on a specific topic. "Uh, I'd really rather not talk about how I ended up here on Earth Bet or how I met Mister Snuggles... Not in detail, not like this." I noticed some other questions though. "I joined the Wards mostly because they helped Weaver's family foster me. Though I have always loved Superheroes for as long as I can remember and I've always wanted to be one." I smiled behind my mask. "In fact, my earliest memory is being saved by Spider-Man, the greatest hero in all the world back home, when I fell out of a window."

A few people asked why we were doing this as a Livestream. "We're doing this as a Livestream instead of a press conference because those Crystal things that attacked the mall like to eat people wearing Klyntar symbiotes and they're apparently after me specifically so I'm not allowed to leave PRT HQ until they're dealt with. Kinda means that anyone they hurt is hurt because of me and... Next question," I said quickly.

"I'm seeing some people ask about Spider-Man," I noted, "uh... Spider-Man would probably lose to your Scion or Eidolon," the people who were said to be the greatest heroes in this world. "Spider-Man isn't the greatest because he's the strongest, or the fastest, or the toughest, or the smartest. Spider-Man's the greatest because... Spider-Man believes that with Great Power, there also comes a Great Responsibility. Because of this, he's always trying to help others and he never, ever, ever, ever gives up. No matter what. That's why he's the greatest hero. And, uh... I think that's all the time we have for the stream."

The technician confirmed so I finished. "Okay, bye everybody," I said with a wave goodbye.

"And we're clear," the technician said after a little bit.

I stood up and stretched a bit. The chair they had me in really wasn't very comfortable. "How'd I do?"

"Other than the groin punching thing," the PR guy said from his monitor, "very good. People are still in the chat and they seem to be reacting well. We might do this again later."

"If we're doing this later, you need to get a more comfortable chair. If we're done I'm gonna go rest for a bit. Maybe take a nap." Answering questions was surprisingly tiring.


	17. The Intern

"I'm telling you," the cute but... somewhat off little girl in the knee-length robes said. "I used my last spell healing Ms. Buggy's burned arm and—ah, healer, whatever artificer made that salve needs to go back to his apprenticeship."

I'd met the girl while I was out patrolling. My first patrol, actually. Honestly, at first, I thought she was a case 53. She wasn't 'ugly,' not really, but there was something distinctly off about her. She said she was ten but she seemed somehow both too short and too thin to be ten. She had east-Asian features, kind of, mostly, but I wasn't sure that was right because something about the shape of her face was slightly off. Like her chin was too much one thing, her jawline too much something else... For sure her bright green eyes were just slightly too big.. Also, her ears were pointed and she had at least two fangs or... Tusks? Some kind of sharp tooth was poking up between her lips.

Right now the PRT's medic was treating a cut on the girl's cheek while we waited for Armsmaster to come back.

One thing or another had led to us fighting Lung. He was gonna kill children, we didn't really have a choice. I was going to tell the little girl to run, but then she made golden fire rain from the sky and Lung didn't much like that. I'm pretty sure she's a trump of some kind because she pulled out several tricks during the fight. Between her doing something that really cooled him off, the sudden rainstorm, and the bolts of energy from her fingertips... Honestly, I felt a little outclassed. All I did was poison him a little. This city was lousy with spiders.

Then Armsmaster showed up and one thing led to another and we were on our way to PRT HQ to talk about joining the Wards. Honestly, it was something I was dreading. Part of being a hero, for me, was to get a bit of control over my life after the Hell of Highschool and signing up for teen drama, rules, schedules, and adults who don't remember what it's like to be teenagers seemed to be rather counterproductive in that regard and I wasn't sure how I was going to talk my way out of it.

"Well," the medic said as he affixed a bandage to the freshly cleaned cut, "healing magic or not, you're fixed up now."

"Thank you," the girl said as she stood up from the examination table and let herself fall to the floor, landing on her feet. Then she grabbed the old-fashioned leather backpack she'd taken off when she hopped on the table in the first place.

"Now, there's just one thing I have to ask you," the medic began. "Do you have any... Weird symbols on your body? Like, say, the Greek letter omega?"

The girl shrugged. "The runic sigil of an ancient malevolent Orcish demi-god is magically tattooed to my back but I'm pretty sure that just a sign of my sorcerous heritage."

"Oh... Kay," the medic said. "I'm gonna go see if Armsmaster is on his way back yet." And then the medic left.

The little girl walked over to the corner I'd been standing in and extended a hand with a smile. "We never got properly introduced, I'm Ashley Beestinger, Prodigy Sorceress and Junior Intern Loremonger for Acquisitions Incorporated. It's nice to meet you and I'd like to be friends." Was that her real name?

I took her hand and shook. "It's nice to meet you too. I don't really have a name yet."

"That's the saddest thing I've ever heard," she said with complete sincerity. So yeah, that was her real name. "so, uh... I've noticed you looking at me... Your body language... You think I look weird, don't you?"

"No," I said quickly. I mean, she was a bit odd but it worked for her.

"It's fine. I'm a Mongrelfolk, I'm used to people looking at me like they've got no idea what I am."

"Ah... Mongrelfolk?"

"You know... Mixed breed?" She said. "A hybrid of hybrids? A little bit of everything?" She hed her hand over her head. "Touch of dwarf?" she gestured to her ears. "Smidgeon of elf?" She opened her mouth and touched a finger to one of the small fangs in her lower jaw. "Taste of orc? I've also got a bit of gnome, halfling, goblin, and some really distant gith and drow that I know of for sure but those all don't really have things I can point at and say for sure come from that."

I blinked behind the lenses of my mask. "So, basically you're a little bit of everything?"

"Yeah," she said with a smile. "Most people get used to it after getting to know me. I'm one of the lucky ones. Most Mangrels are a mismatch of features and some of them look like horribly deformed goblins. I at least have it blended together so it looks even enough. I could probably pass for a short elf if I had too."

She looked at the sleeve of my costume, the one that'd been singed when I took a hit from Lung. "Let me get that for you." She waved her hand over my arm, I felt a gust of warm air, and then the singe was gone.

"I thought you were out of spells?"

"That was prestidigitation," Ashley explained. "It's really more of a cantrip than a proper spell. Really prestidigitations are tricks so minor that calling them cantrips is an exaggeration. Just minor tricks that a lot of arcanists pick up when they're getting started practicing magic. Once you get to the point that you can cast proper spells, most people who started with them can just improvise however many of them they want, if they started with it or take the time to learn how from someone who did." She smiled. "Anyway, the point is that I can work minor tricks like that and my other cantrips as much as I want, as natural as breathing. It's only full spells that I need to rest between castings."

"Okay..."

"So I have a question," she continued. "Where are we?"

"PRT ENE Headquarters," I explained. I got a blank stare in response. "Brockton Bay?" Nothing. "New Hampshire?"

"Oh," the child said. "The home of the Darkmagics. Got it. Could have sworn I was plane shifted or something, this makes it so much easier to get back home."

She opened her leather backpack and reached down into it and... Apparently it was bigger on the inside because she leaned halfway into it to the point that it rested on the floor with her leather booted feet kicking in the air before she leaned back and fell out holding a leather-bound book, a jar of ink, and a feather quill pen. "My haversack has a defect. The stuff I want isn't always on the top," she shrugged. "It was half off, you get what you pay for."

She sat on the floor and started writing in the journal.

"You're serious about the Sorceress thing, aren't you?"

"Why wouldn't I be? I have a rich mystical bloodline that lets me bend reality to my will. It's a super rare talent, especially bloodlines like mine, not something you joke about lightly. Now uh, I don't want to be rude but I've got this magic journal that lets me send letters to people I know but I can only send so many words a day if I want to get answers back so I need to think carefully about this."

I had to stop her. I had to explain that this place was not anything like what she was used to, a world apparently called Faerun.

A week later I was looking at my Wards contract, which had been negotiated in part by the owner of the mercenary company that Ashley interned for via her Journal. I wasn't sure why exactly it had me listed as an Intern with Acquisitions Incorporated, why there were so many acid pit related clauses, or why my surname was listed as Hebert-Beestinger in the legal text. All I knew was that I was getting paid a ton and that I couldn't get in trouble for anything short of murdering someone in cold blood so I signed it.

"Ashley... Axebeard... Beestinger," the little girl said as she gave her own signature in ink with a quill pen.

"Axebeard?"

"It was my original surname before I was adopted, so I kept it as my middle name," she explained. "It's dwarvish. A lot of elf and dwarf in Grandpa's side of the family. And you had Beestinger added to your name in yours because Great Grandma Rosie just kind of adopts people for reasons. I knew you were gonna ask."

*End*

Inspired by a recent conversation about translating Ashley's concept to a D&D setting, which eventually turned to a discussion of Acquisitions Incorporated

I don't have a set of stats for her... Mostly because Mongrelfolk don't have 5e stats, but an accurate depiction of Ashley would be a level 3 Divine Soul Sorcerer with an "Evil" divine ancestor. For this alternate version, I dropped the "symbiote" angle and played up the "Apocalypse" angle's equivalent. Unlike the main, Marvel bassed Ashley who doesn't know she's from a bastard line of Clan Akkaba, what the symbol on her back means, or even the majority of her ethnic background, Ashley Axebeard Beestinger knows quite a bit about her ancestry and takes pride in being a mix of more or less everything, including God. Her divine Ancestor might have been a malevolent Orcish Demigod, but being part God is still kind of cool. When converting from Marvel to D&D, an unusually intelligent Orcish Demigod makes the most sense to me for converting Apocalypse, since D&D Orcs by default tend to have the extreme "survival of the fittest and punish weakness" philosophy that Apocalypse is defined by.


	18. Marvelous Miracles

**Marvelous Miracles**

Spider-Man stepped into the lab at #4 Yancy Street, a building bigger on the inside than on the outside, accompanied by Val Richards, the now teenaged daughter of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman. "So, why does your dad want to see me?"

"We have video," Val explained. She didn't seem happy. "It'd be easier to just show you."

As Spider-Man took in the lab, he could make out the rest of the Fantastic Four hanging out... Johnny was icing a nasty bruise on his face and Sue was noticeably bandaged.

"What happened?" Spider-Man said, rushing over.

"We think your old foe the Jackal is up to his old tricks again," Reed said, drawing Spider-Man's attention to monitor with a still frame of what appeared to be a young girl with greyish blue skin, glowing red eyes, and dark blue lips. The upper part of her face was concealed by a red domino mask while the rest of her body was covered in head to toe in an exact duplicate of Spidercide's costume with a Spidercide doll of some kind tied to her hip. There were clearly visible road signs and street lamps torn down around her.

"While on the way home from a family excursion," Reed began to explain, "we caught sight of this child causing a great deal of property damage. Being who were are, we, of course, parked the Fantasticar and made to deal with it, though considering her apparent age we took care to more gently admonish her at first and well..."

Reed started the video. It'd clearly been taken by some kind of device on the Fantasticar itself. As the Four stepped out of their vehicle and walked around to approach the rampaging child, Sue taking point to try and calm the young girl down...

And then the girl screamed "Smash!" and punched Sue across the street.

Peter watched in growing horror as the Fantastic Four did battle with the small girl who claimed with increasingly less coherence that she would get revenge on the world and that nothing would ever hurt her again. She moved with speed comparable, maybe even faster than Spider-Man's own. To be fair, the Four clearly werren't trying to hurt her, but...

"It doesn't make sense," he said as he observed. "The girl seems to have powers like mine," Even organic webbing or web-shooters, judging from how she smothered Johnny's flames with web, "but the Jackal's never made someone more than a little bit stronger than me. And she's... I know I beat you guys the first time we met, but you're all constantly getting stronger while my powers plateaued years ago. At her age, she shouldn't be able to..."

And then the girl countered Reed's attempts to bind her in his stretched arms by stretching and deforming herself in a somewhat more fluid way and punching him with an oversized arm.

"Ah. The costume isn't just for show," Spider-Man said. "she's a full-on Little Miss Spidercide."

The video concluded with Franklin jumping into the fray and sucker-punching the little girl with a blast of cosmic energy before the Four retreated.

"There's something up with that kid," Franklin said as he walked over from the wall he'd been leaning against. "I undercharged that bioblast, but that's still the same attack I used to destroy Mephisto's body that time I got sent to Hell. But look."

Other than damage to the back of the costume that quickly regenerated, the child didn't seem at all hurt.

"Wait," Spider-Man said as the feed cut off. "Can we go back and freeze-frame on where the girl's upper back is exposed?" Something had caught his eye. A red mark.

Reed complied, and Spider-Man was able to get a better look at it. Between the girl's shoulder blades was an oval symbol, four wedged surrounding a smaller oval with a sharp horizontal line running through it.

"I'm vaguely familiar with that symbol," Spider-Man admitted. "I saw it once when I was working with the X-Men on something... Grey skin, blue lips, red eyes... I don't think this girl's a spider-clone. At least, not just a Spider-Clone. I think she's related to Apocalypse."

Reed sighed. "Franklin. I have a very important job for you. Normal humans and mutates aren't allowed on Krakoa without an invitation, but any mutant can go there at any time. As much as I'm uncomfortable with what they're doing if this involves Apocalypse we're going to need the X-Men's help."

"Do you want me to write down a specific message?"

"If you run into Wolverine," Spider-Man added, "tell him that I'm tied up in this and that I'll forget about the fifty bucks he owes me if he convinces the X-Men to help."

"While the X-Men may be of invaluable help in this situation," came a new voice from behind everyone, "you're all missing some vital information."

Spider-Man spun on his heel to see that Doctor Strange had teleported into the room. "While the child is, from what I've put together, a mutant descended from En Sabah Nur, the origin of her powers is mystical in nature."

"Of course they are," Reed said with dissatisfaction clear in his tone. It was no secret that Mister Fantastic just couldn't wrap his head around the supernatural, no matter how much he stretched it

"What, someone enchanted a little mutant girl to give her Spider-Man's powers?" Val asked. "You can do that? Because if that's possible, there are so many uses for a psionic danger sense and superhuman contortionism in a lab setting and dozens of—"

"In a manner of speaking," the Sorcerer Supreme interrupted, "but you'd be better pursuing Spider-Girl or Silk with that line of questioning because no amount of training will allow you to replicate the effect that transformed this little girl into a second Spidercide."

"How about you explain what's going on for us, Doc?" Spider-Man asked.

Steven Strange adopted a pose, with the same finger positions that Spider-Man used to activate his web-shooters, and with a golden glow, he conjured an image of a small fairy-like blob thing. "You're all familiar with the Phoenix Force? Well, certain magical beings fulfill similar roles but are more overtly benevolent. This is a generic representation of them, they can't normally be seen. They're called Kwamis and embody concepts like creation, destruction, illusion... Transmission."

"Like a genie in a bottle, each godlike sprite is bound to an artifact called a Miraculous and must serve whoever owns it. They're meant to be used for good purposes, but the power of Transmission has been coopted and is being used for evil by a Parisian villain called... Well, his name translates to Butterfly, but I've been told that Hawk Moth is the preferred English."

"Now, I normally stay out of it because of a magically binding contract made between one of my predecessors and the magician who created the Miraculous," Strange explained, "and because the Wielders of Creation and Destruction have been more or less keeping it contained, but I can't be completely inactive when the abuse of benevolent magic is happening just outside my door."

"Luckily," the surgeon turned sorcerer finished with a finger snap, causing some kind of invisibility spell to fade away revealing two teenagers dressed in red and black, "Ladybug and Chat Noir both happened to be visiting New York City for reasons I didn't pry about... Though we did get accosted by the Black Cat on the way here."

"She's just jealous that I do a better job of staying on theme," the blond boy in black leather said with a smirk as one of the cat-ear hairclips upon his head cocked to the side.

"I don't know why," Spider-Man said, "but I like this kid." He extended a hand. "I'm assuming Chat Noir? Amazing Spider-Man."

"Oy vey, he found a mini-me," The Thing muttered under his breath as the kid in the cat costume took Spider-Man's extended hand.

"After learning of their presence in the city," Strange continued, "and bound by thousand-year-old oaths not to directly act, I did some investigations and called in a few favors to get more information. The girl's name is Ashley O'Leary. She's mixed race, being Japanese on her mother's side and a mix of Chinese and Irish on her father's. She was kidnapped about a year and a half ago by mercenaries employed by some unethical scientists and arms dealers so they could harvest her for mutant growth hormone, and those mercenaries also killed her parents right in front of her." Doctor Strange looked directly at Spider-Man, "and according to some posters and drawings her landlord saved in case she ever turned up, she has nothing but love and admiration for you specifically, Spider-Man."

"The Butterfly Miraculous is meant to amplify emotions and give people fantastical powers for a short time," the girl in red and black spots said as she stepped forward, "and to help coordinate efforts between those temporary heroes and other Miraculous holders, but Hawk Moth is abusing it to turn innocent people into supervillains for his schemes." She walked up to Reed. "Excuse me, sir, could you rewind the video so we can get a good look at her?"

Reed complied, and Ladybug continued to explain. "The usual process is that he'll corrupt a butterfly into something called an Akuma, which he then sends out to find someone who is angry or sad about something, and it merges with an object, usually something either close to what caused the emotions or of sentimental value to the person to be possessed, which then gives the person powers but amplifies their negative traits and emotions. Break the object, the Akuma is released, they turn back, and I can purify the butterfly and work a spell to reverse all the damage they caused."

She pointed at the doll on the girl's hip. "That's obviously where the Akuma is. Based on what Doctor Strange learned and shared with us, the most likely course of events is that Hawkmoth sensed little Ashley's despair and anger at what was happening to her, maybe all the way from Paris... He normally sticks to things like getting fired unfairly, senior citizens being grumpy about the world-changing, or kids being embarrassed about something. This is on a whole other level... Anyway, that he sensed her and gave her powers that were meant to be a reflection of her idol's."

"So we destroy the doll and an innocent little girl turns back to normal, got it," Spider-Man nodded.

"It's more complicated than that, " Doctor strange interrupted. "Hawk Moth was explicitly imitating the abilities of a known Spider-Totem, and so inadvertently turned the girl into a Totem herself. The inadvertent mixture of two high-order magics—"

"Spider-Man isn't magic," Reed interrupted.

"I kind of am," Spider-Man replied. "It's complicated."

"The point," Strange continued, "is that there's a feedback loop constantly making her stronger. A scan of her mystical aura I managed to get while back tracing her indicates that there are strange reactions between the magics and her own nature as a mutant. We have to stop her now because no one knows what could happen if she remains so transformed for an extended period of time. I can't help directly but I do have a plan."

*Gratuitous AU crossover*

There were a dozen shattered Sentinels on the ground of Central Park when Spider-Man managed to swing into action, a little girl now grown to giant size tearing a thirteenth's apart with her bare hands.

She laughed in a bitter and almost demented matter. "Mutant detected? Mutant Detected?! Too bad! Nothing can hurt me, I'm the strongest!"

"Yes, yes you are!" Spider-Man called out to her, causing the giant child to look down at him.

"...Spider-Man?" she shrank down to normal size, sounding suddenly very confused and conflicted.

"Yeah," he said, slowly stepping forward. "I heard one of my biggest fans was out and about and decided to have a little chat with her. Is that alright, Ashley?"

"It's Menace!"

"Menace?"

"French Jerk wanted to call me Itsy. I like Menace better."

Spider-Man suppressed a shudder. The girl turning out like Spidercide was bad enough, but if she ended up like that hybrid mutate...

"Like me?"

"Huh?"

"You're a menace, just like me," Spider-Man began. "That's what the papers always called me. But I don't think you want to be."

The child ran towards him, rage apparent in her every movement. She threw a punch, her arm enlarging and extending.

And Spider-Man stood his ground without flinching.

And her first stopped just inches before impacting his body.

"See what I mean? You don't want to hurt me."

"Shut up! Just shut up!"

"I get it," he said, "you're hurt. You're angry. I know who you are," he said changing topics, "I know you know who I am. That french jerk? He wanted to make you into a monster, so he gave you a great power... But you know what comes with that, don't you?"

The girl did not respond, so Spider-Man pulled the trump card and produced a photograph framed in red with black spots. A photograph of a little girl smiling, held in the arms of her parents with her grandfather standing by her parents. And he showed it to her.

"What would they think of what you're doing?"

It was like a switch. One second, the child had been nothing but rage, but that had gotten through to the real girl beneath the spell. she collapsed to her knees and cried in the middle of the park.

His first instinct would be to comfort her, but he couldn't. Not yet.

As Menace cried, she was too caught up in her feelings to notice the yoyo snatching away the doll from her hip until it was too late. By the time she became aware, her magically induced rage returning to her as she jumped to her feet, the Doll was already in the hands of Chat Noir, who cried "cataclysm" and destroyed the doll with a touch.

Instantly, Ashley's Spidercide costume vanished and was replaced with some kind of gown. She fell into the fetal position and began crying as though no one was around. Spider-Man tossed the framed photo like a frisbee over to Ladybug. She'd conjured it, and now she needed it to work whatever spell would fix all of this. He didn't really pay much attention to the burst of red in the sky above them that vanished the broken Sentinels. He had more pressing concerns.

He kneeled down next to the crying child. "Ashley? Are you okay?"

"...No."

*And now the ending*

Peter Parker practically dragged himself into bed. The little girl. Ashley... She'd been through so much. Shortly after putting everything right, Ladybug had come over and given Ashley the photograph that had been in the frame and the now repaired doll, now in the form of a spider-plushy. This had gotten Ashley talking. About how she watched her parents be gunned down. About how she was sick all the time. About how she was only able to keep going because she'd managed to grab her spider-plushy when she was taken and holding it and imagining that Spider-Man was coming to save her.

And hadn't that hurt to hear.

She talked about how there was some major commotion in another room, and about how she'd managed to will herself off the table, rip the tubes from her arms and legs, and escape the facility she was in even when she lost her strength and had to crawl only to get captured again just ten feet out the door. About how the guard that found her tore up her plushy just to hurt her, and then the next thing she remembered she was in central park.

And then she asked why she was periwinkle.

Doctor Strange appeared then, cast some kind of diagnostic spell, and confirmed that the unforeseen mixture of magics had caused permanent effects to the child down to her DNA, awakening some recessive traits from her ancient ancestor. She hadn't taken it well.

Chat Noir and Ladybug ran off, saying something about timers, but not before the Parisian heroine made it clear that she'd be in contact to check on the girl.

Franklin arrived, having delivered Reed's message and gotten help from the X-Men just in time to miss all the action.

The X-Men took the little girl back to Krakoa, arguing that nobody was going to buy the brainwashing story with a mutant involved and that since she now looked like Apocalypse she'd never be able to have a normal life, but there had been no Argument when Spider-Man insisted that he'd be checking in on her regularly.

After that emotionally exhausting ordeal, Peter needed to rest.

"Rough day, Tiger?" questioned the beautiful redheaded woman who owned the apartment he was crashing in.

"Yeah," he admitted. "It's a long story. How was that meeting with the French fashion designer?" Mary-Jane Watson, the woman that Peter Parker wanted to spend the rest of his life with now that they were back together, had recently gotten back into modeling and had received a grand opportunity.

"Mr. Agreste rushed out in the middle of the meeting," she said. "Apparently his son went missing."

Peter sighed. "Well, that's one more thing I need to take care of," he said as he climbed out of bed. How hard could it be to find a foreign fashion designer's son when he's lost in New York City?

*AN* Based on discussions of what an Akumatisized Ashley would be like.

I hope that no one minds the Ladybug characters taking second fiddle, but I honestly don't think I can do their character voices very well just yet.


	19. Learning to Cook

"...And once you're done applying the butter," Taylor read aloud from some instructions we printed out, "you need to prebake the dough for six minutes to make the crust. Do you want help with getting it into the oven?"

"No, I should be okay." Mister Snuggles had already pulled back inside me so he wouldn't get hurt by the heat of the oven. Once I finished brushing on the melted garlic butter mixture, I slid on the oven mitts, grabbed the cookie sheet I had the dough spread out on, opened the oven, slid the sheet in, closed the door, and set the timer for six minutes "Okay, what's next?"

"While the crust is baking, you need to wash and cut the mushrooms," Taylor read allowed.

A few days ago, I realized that since I wasn't bedridden all the time anymore that I could do a bunch of stuff for myself that I figured I'd never be able to do. So I decided to learn how to cook on my own. I looked up some beginner recipes and found a couple for homemade pizza.

And the grocery store had anchovy fillets on sale this week, which I took to be a sign.

I started washing the mushrooms. "What does it say about preparing the anchovies?" I asked while I got the knife.

Taylor made a sound kind of like a gagging cat. "All it says is to lightly rinse them to clean off the excess salt and oil."

I stopped halfway through cutting the first mushroom. "But the salt and oil is the yummy part."

"Ashley," Taylor deadpanned, "if you just wanted salt and oil you'd be putting bacon on the pizza."

"Not everything is a peanut butter cup, Taylor," I grumbled. A lot of people didn't seem to realize that two things that are good on their own, like bacon and pizza, aren't always good together.

I finished up with the mushrooms and even rinsed off the anchovies like they said to... recipe must have been written by a hack. Oh well, and then the timer dinged so I put the oven mitts back on and pulled out the crust.

"Okay, now what?" I asked.

"You wait a few minutes for the crust to cool," she said while checking, "then you apply the sauce. It recommends grating the cheese while waiting for the crust to cool off."

"Okay!" And then a thought occurred to me. "Do we have a cheese grater?"

"Under the sink," Taylor said. "Get the cheese out of the fridge, I'll get the grater and make sure it's clean."

I went and grabbed a brick of mozzarella and a can of pre-grated parmigiana. The recipe calls for freshly grated parm but we couldn't find it ungrated in our budget.

Taylor was taking a paper towel to a slightly wet grater. "You want to do this part by yourself, too?"

"Yeah," I said with a nod and took the grater. Shred. Shred. Shred the cheese. That's what the grater's for.

"And once you're done with that," Taylor went on, "the crust should be cool enough to apply the marinara sauce."

"Okay," I said and then sped up on the grating. Once I had enough cheese I grabbed a spoon and the jar of sauce and started on that.

"Now, the recipe says to spread on one spoonful at a time," Taylor said as she looked over the instructions again. "It says that at least three spoonfuls will work and that you shouldn't use more than five. You're looking for a thin but opaque coating of sauce, and remember to leave the edges unsauced. It says that it's better to use too little than too much."

"Got it," I said. I took a spoonful of sauce from the jar, dabbed it down in the middle of the pizza crust, and used the bottom of the spoon to spread it out. And then I did it a few more times. It took four and a half spoonfuls to get it right. "Is there anything special that needs to be done with the cheese and toppings?"

"Sprinkle on the mozzarella evenly till you've completely covered the sauce," Taylor read, "distribute the toppings evenly, press them down into the cheese and sauce, lightly sprinkle on another handful of mozzarella, then lightly dust the whole thing with the parm." She shrugged. "Seems simple enough."

I'd already started adding the cheese by the time she finished. 'Soon, soon' I thought to myself, 'I'll finally have a decent pizza with extra yummy salty slices of fishies to go with the supper nummy shroomies.'

As I was applying the mushrooms, it occurred to me that I might be an addict. Oh well. Lots of people thought anchovies were gross, so someone has to eat them. Might as well be me.

 _"And yet Ashley constantly questions this one's suggestion of consuming cerebral matter with the same logic employed by those who question your preference for the things designated anchovy."_

"The differance, Mister Snuggles, is that anchovies didn't use to be the part of a person," I said out loud. "The brain is the human-computer. It's basically everything a person is, unless souls exist, and it'd be really weird to look at that and wonder what it tastes like. Besides, didn't you tell me that you don't need to eat brains because my body produces extras of all the chemicals you feed on. And that we can get the brain chemicals from chocolate if we have to."

Mister Snuggles didn't reply.

"If we're comparing brains to pizza toppings, brains are probably closer to pineapple than anchovies. Something that no sane person would put on a pizza. Stupid Hawaiian pizza isn't even Hawaiian, it was invented in Canada, the country with mutant concentration camps and where people keep eating each other and turning into monsters becuase they're eating each other, so forget about it."

I heard Taylor make a bunch of awkward gasps. "Ashley. I'm sorry, but the only way I'm ever letting you go home is if I go with you and bring all of the guns that exist."

"Can't kill wendigoes with guns," I said back while finishing up with the toppings. "Gotta like, stab them in the heart, cut their heads off, kill them with magic weapons, or damage them faster than they can regenerate with high level superhuman or magical attacks, and we're not strong enough. Or cure them with magic if you know how to. Also if they bite you without killing and eating you, you turn into a wendigo. Even if you're not in Canada. How long do I put the pizza back in the oven for?" I finished.

"Oh, um, eight to fifteen minutes." She seemed distracted by how fast I switched from wendigoes back to pizza. "You want the crust to be golden brown and the cheese to be a little bubbly."

I got the oven mitts back and slid the pizza into the oven, set the timer, and then I went over to the kitchen table and sat down, with Mister Snuggles reforming my normal outfit since we'd be away from the oven for a bit.

And now I waited.

"Seems like a lot of work just to get one specific kind of pizza," Taylor said after a minute.

"It's not just about probably my last chance to finally get a decent pizza," I said. "It's about uh... It's silly."

"No, go ahead."

"I've already told you how, on a good day, I might be able to stand o my own for maybe a few hours total?" I started. "I'm, I'm still getting used to the idea that I can just... Do things for myself. I want to learn how to cook becuase it's something I never figured I'd be able to do for myself."

"And that's perfectly understandable," Taylor admitted. "I have to think that if I were in your shoes, I'd be freaking out when I realized I could just go outside whenever I want."

My eyes went wide. "Oh my gosh, I just realized that I just can go outside whenever I want."

"...Do, do you want to start coming with me when I go jogging in the morning?"

I smiled. "I'd like that."

A little over ten minutes later, I was happily enjoying the first slice of proper pizza I'd had in over a year.

*AN* Something I was thinking about for the last couple of days.

The "human-computer" bit is a reference to Team Four Star's Pokemon: Leaf Green Nuzlocke.


	20. Bad End

A belated Happy Halloween to everyone.

This uh... I'd feel remiss in not saying that some people might find parts of this **100% Non-Canon** oneshot a bit disturbing. There's nothing too graphic, but this is a **Horror** snip.

That out of the way

 **Bad End**

The city was drenched in blood.

Wherever it wasn't, it was on fire.

At least, that's how it was the last time I saw it.

It'd been such a beautiful day outside. Birds were singing. Flowers were blooming. On days like today, kids like me should have been playing outside.

And then every piece of glass in the city shattered all at once.

So soon after the poisons, we weren't prepared. They broke into the base. Klara died crying and begging for someone named Molly.

Everything happened so quick. We had to flee, the... Nightmares of stitched flesh and crude steel. There so many of them. Some of them even had symbiote powers and I could have sworn that one of them was what would happen if you sewed Cyclops and Deadpool together and then gave them sword arms.

We all got separated in the chaos and had to make our way to a rendezvous point on our own and... Oh God, there were so many. So many people dying and I couldn't save anyone... I found Donar dead. By Thor's golden locks not even the worst racist son of a... Bhitseach deserves that. I tried to grab Mjolnir from the... puddle it was in, to try to save as many people as I could with its power, but I still wasn't Worthy.

I had to leave it when I saw _Fucking_ Carnage himself leading some of the mechano-super-zombies in a mob down the street I was on to slaughter any stragglers... I was never going to forget the woman who called out to me when he impaled her through the stomach on the blunt end of a sledgehammer but I couldn't... I couldn't save her. I couldn't save anyone.

I ran. There was a rendezvous point for this exact situation, we had to meet there and regroup, but I couldn't help notice that "Carnage Rules" was scrawled in blood on every streetcorner that wasn't on fire and... So many people were dead already and it hadn't even been an hour. What happened!?

I stepped over what I'm pretty sure was the body of Norman Osborn in an iron patriot suit... that got blown up.

The only other person to make it to the rendezvous point, an office building set aside for meeting with all the capes of a city in case of like, giant monster attacks or something, was Taylor.

But she wasn't Taylor anymore.

Someone had sewn two muscular pairs of arms, one black and one white, above and below her natural arms. They didn't line up just right and there was fresh scaring on her head that...

She leaned and spider-crawled to me and opened her mouth to vomit out darkness and spikey, meaty spiders the size of footballs. Everything went black and something bit me and then I was here.

Helpless again.

My blood being slowly sucked out of me again.

But it was different this time. Before I was helpless becuase I was too weak and sick to move.

Now I was helpless becuase I was infected by some poison or venom. Something strong enough to get past my resistance.

Something that paralyzed me but left me feeling everything. Even things like my heartbeat that I couldn't feel before.

It kept Mister Snuggles from moving, either. I couldn't even hear him.

But like I said. I could feel.

I could feel the razor edge of the knife and the blond girl's hands digging through my intestines as she poked and prodded to see how Mister Snuggles bonded to my organs.

She was saying something, but I couldn't hear her over the agony that I don't even have the words to explain.

I had a mouth, but I couldn't scream.

After I don't even know how long, she left. She just left me cut open and laying on a table, starring helplessly at the fluorescent light above me.

What felt like an hour of agony later, I smelled something. Something other than the metallic scent of my own blood. Something like, like rotten eggs and a charcoal fire.

And then I felt something climb up onto the table with me. Something slowly slither up my body, through my wounds... It probably would have hurt more if it'd happened a day ago, but a day ago I didn't know what pain was.

And then it was up above my head, looking down at me, a white scaled snake with eyes that glowed like coals. It was surprisingly clean. It flicked out its forked tongue to lick a dry tear from my cheek, and then it's mouth moved like it was a human mouth, a disturbing movement for a snake.

"Please allow me to introduce myself," it said in a deep voice. Like Thor, but without any warmth, "I'm a man of wealth and taste." I think he was trying to be funny but in a mean way. "I can't help but think that you're in quite a pickle, little girl... But I can help you out of it, for a price that is..."

I did my best to glare at him.

"Don't look at me like that," he said. "I don't want your soul... Even after all of this, your soul is far too good and pure, a little mote made of love and sugar. It'd burn the Hell out of me if I tried to claim it. Pun not intended. Normally I'd offer you... Vengence, for what's been done to you. To your friends. To your family, but you've already had a taste of Vengence and, while you find it a useful tool, you're much more interested in Justice of all kinds. You want to be a Symbol of Peace and Justice. A hero who eradicates evil, who fixes or destroys what doesn't work. You want power and the responsibility that comes with it. Tell you what? Some people owe me a few favors and a certain someone is looking for a partner or two... I can give you enough power to live up to the Ultimate responsibility."

I kept glaring.

"Seriously, people look at fiends such as myself and judge us so unfairly," the snake said with a roll of his eyes. "Not everything we do is evil... Even the man you idolize has dealt with my counterpart in your native reality on one occasion." That was a lie. It had to be a lie. "Now, you aren't upset? You don't feel cheated by the injustice of this all? The future mystic said it was a stable time-loop. That you'd grow up, be happy, be an Avenger. This wasn't supposed to happen. Someone cheated, young child of Akkaba, to make sure this came to pass when it shouldn't have" Akkaba? What did that mean? I tried to ignore him. You're not supposed to listen when the Devil cuts a bargain, but...

"The world is going to end, child. As soon as two years, as late as fifteen. Captain Universe failed and I... take offense at my favorite playthings being destroyed by some worm forsaken by both Hell and God. I can give you the power to stop it. To avenge this travesty. Heal your body. Cure your sickness. Give you the powers you were meant to have and those of your Mutant ancestors, mend your partner and grant him the full brunt of the powers he's absorbed, and give you an even greater power that has nothing at all to do with my infernal own. I've cleared it with my counterpart in your reality so as to have no conflicts, cashed in my favors, Her Majesty is willing... The only thing I ask of you is that you kill Scion for me. Trust me, he deserves it."

What?

"If you're willing, all you need to do is say my name. I hope you've guessed it."

I tried to speak. I needed to say something. I worked up all my strength and forced it into my lungs, and managed to wheeze three syllables.

"Me... Phis... to."

The snake smiled and melted away and then above me there was a red-skinned man with a colossal, spikey widow's peak. "She's willing, my lady. I leave the rest to you, per our arrangement," and vanished in a puff of smoke.

And then I burst into flame. Again, I learned a new definition of pain. But then it faded, and I could hear Mister Snuggles again.

 _"Ashley, what have you done?"_

 ***All Hell Breaks Lose***

The city was doomed. He didn't know how they'd done it, but the Slaughterhouse Nine had stepped up their game significantly. Soon, the rest of the Protectorate would be here, from all over the country. And some independents too. And PRT Quarentiene squads. they'd either slaughter the Nine or trap them in the city for the foreseeable future.

He'd failed, Armsmaster thought as he slashed one of Bonesaw's zombies apart with the nanothorns he'd been preparing for use on the Endbrigners. He was the leader of the Protectorate in this city. He was supposed to protect it.

Now the only honorable thing to do was to buy time for the reinforcements to get there or die trying and...

He hadn't been expecting the pile of charred Bonesaw creations.

Or the... dismembered remains of all identified members of the Nine, save the Siberian, in the middle of the street.

The flaming van was expected, he'd passed several.

But the oddest thing of all was Cuddlebug, alive and well, surrounded by all the Carnage.

"Cuddlebug?" he called out. He'd honestly written her off, after finding the evidence that she'd been dragged off from the rendezvous point. He was hesitant to accept that it wasn't a trap. Those corpses could be doctored, but he had to hope that there was one other survivor.

She didn't answer.

"Ashley?"

The girl's costume, he symbiote, began to swirl from specific patterns to gold marbled through with dark blue.

"Ashley's dead," she said in Cuddlebug's voice. "After all of this? We can't be Ashley. We can't be Mister Snuggles. We can't be Cuddlebug. Innocent. Cutesy. It doesn't fit us anymore."

His lie detector registered everything as Ashley completely believing everything she said. It was heartbreaking.

"But you are, or were, the person I'm asking about, yes?"

"Yes."

It registered as the truth. That was a relief.

"Then what do you want to be called now?" They could work out more important details, like getting her some therapy for the PTSD she was guaranteed to have after this nightmare, once he got her the hell out of here but before he could do that he needed to be able to communicate with her.

The dark blue swirls in her costume suddenly turned blood red. She began to levitate off the ground, far higher than she was normally limited to, and Armsmaster grew concerned again.

"We are fire!" she shouted.

The swirls of blood-red overwhelmed the gold, inverting her palet so that she was cloaked in metallic red with accents of gold marbled through.

"And life incarnate!"

The costume settled. A golden bird emblem on her chest and golden eyes were the only things that werren't solid red. Her wings, far larger and stronger than before erupted from her back, and her eye lenses formed into jagged crescents as her mouth tore open to show her fangs and long, forked tongue.

"Now and forever," she concluded as she burst into flames which formed around her as a giant bird of prey, **"We!** ** _Are!_** ** _Phoenix!_** **"**

Ashley had told them about the Phoenix Force. And now it dawned upon Colin in horror that the Slaughterhouse Nine might be gone, but now an emotional and traumatized child may have become something far worse.

 **AN:** Again, a Belated Happy Halloween to anyone who made it through the whole thing.


	21. Christmas with the wards

"God damn it, Ashley," Missy grumbled from inside the booth. "I blame you for this."

"How is it my fault?" Ashley asked.

"We're in an audio booth about to record songs," Missy said. "And you're the one who was always talking about doing a theme song."

"But we're not doing theme songs," Ashley countered. "We're recording a novelty Christmas Album."

"Yeah, yeah," Missy grumbled. "Recording a Christmas Album before it's even Thanksgiving."

"I mean, it takes time to edit this stuff so it sounds nice," Ashley said with a shrug. "Honestly, if they want it ready by the Christmas season they should have had us do it months ago."

"Yeah... Uh, Klara?" Missy said to the third girl in the booth. "You're on my side here, right? Spending days recording songs when we have more important things to do—"

"I'm only here becuase they asked me to be the third chipmunk," the somewhat creepy swiss girl said. "I'm really only doing this one song."

"Damn it," Missy. "There's gotta be a way out of this... Ashley, you're a pagan aren't you?"

"Thorites observe secular Holidays and acknowledge the legitimacy of other faiths and their traditions," Ashley replied. "Also, a lot of Modern Christmas traditions are derived from Norse and Celtic winter traditions. Like, Santa Claus is basically a conflation of the Christian Saint Nicholas and Odin, who would travel the world in winter and leave small gifts to good children who left snacks for Sleipnir. Of course, Odin doesn't do that anymore but _somebody_ with a white beard has been seen using fantastical powers to travel the world and give people gifts on Christmas eve."

For a brief moment, Missy had an expression appropriate for a child her age instead of the old veteran she felt like inside. But then it was gone. "So, no religious exemption?"

"No," Ashley confirmed. "Besides, if you notice we're only scheduled to sing secular Christmas songs and non-denominational winter-slash-holiday stuff. The only way out of this would be if someone didn't observe Christmas at all?"

"Technically," Klara said evenly, "as a Swiss Calvinist I'm not supposed to observe any Holiday that isn't mentioned in the Bible," but she shrugged. "But I don't really practice anymore and that would at most only get you out of the one song."

"...I'm going to regret asking why you don't practice anymore, aren't I?" Missy began hesitantly.

"Probably," Klara admitted but did not actually explain.

"So, you've never celebrated Christmas? Or any Holiday?" Ashley asked Klara.

"After coming to the present I observed a few celebrations with my friends and later my foster parents," she admitted. "I was a little surprised that Molly was so religious, but.." She shrugged. "It was nice. What about you two?"

"I spent my last few Christmases on base," Missy said. "My parents are constantly fighting, it... It's better not to deal with it."

Ashley gave Missy an unprompted hug.

"So I was always really sick and really tired until I got Mister Snuggles." Ashley began after releasing the space-warping cosmic-hulk from the hug, "so it's not like we could go anywhere. Usually what would happen is on Christmas Eve my family would move the kitchen table into the living room so I could sit on the couch and eat dinner with the family. We didn't really have a traditional dinner, we just ate whatever. One time when the oven was broke we just made a big order at a deli and now I want a beef brisket sandwich." After a moment of getting her thoughts back on track after the non-sequitur, Ashley continued. "After dinner, we'd watch a couple of Christmas movies—I really like The Nightmare Before Christmas... Actually, they said we could do Kidnap the Sandy Claws for the album if I could convince two other Wards to be Lock and Barrel... Hey,"

"I'll think about it," Misy deadpanned.

"After that, I'd usually fall asleep on the couch. I'd wake up Christmas day. We'd do presents and then spend the whole day together and..." Ashley went silent.

And stayed silent.

"Ashley?" Missy asked.

"I'm sorry. I just realized that... I mean, last year too, but that didn't really count becuase I was in the bunker, but... This is gonna be my first Christmas without my parents."

Missy returned the hug Ashley had given her earlier. After a few minutes, she asked, "so, which one's Lock and which one's Barrel?"

Ashley smiled, but couldn't answer before the man from Image who was overseeing the recording sessions got there with the technician close behind him.

"Sorry I'm so late," the Image man said. "Some nut from the Inquirer showed up demanding to schedule an interview with the Wards and I was the lowest guy on the totem pole... anyway, are we ready?"

 **AN** : I know this is a bit early, but the idea struct so I wrote it.

The bit about Ashley's family's Christmas tradition and preferences for Christmas movies is canon, but the rest of this is just a side story that has no bearing on the plot.


	22. Friendly Misery Poker

"Hey, Klara?" Ashley asked the new girl. "Uh, this is a bit awkward since I don't know you too well, but I've got something on my mind and you're the only one around, so, uh..."

"That's fine, what are you thinking?" the older girl asked.

"That Livestream I did... Someone asked me if I'd ever had a crush on anyone... What's the obsession people have with romance? Especially with people my age. Why can't kids be kids?"

"Ashley. At your age, I was married and had a job in a textile factory," Klara began seriously. "I was the sole wage earner. I'm saying this to make it abundantly clear that I agree with you completely."

"Excuse me for a second," Ashley asked while sitting up. "I think I need to go and reevaluate how bad my life was recently..."

"No, you don't," Klara said as she stood. "One of the things I've learned since coming to the future is that no one deserves to feel bad for feeling bad. I was made to feel that I _deserved_ to work myself half to death in unsafe conditions all day, buy groceries on credit because my husband spent my wages on liquor, and then come home to be beaten and raped by an old drunk. So I didn't complain and I felt bad for feeling bad about my life... But now I know that was wrong, that I didn't deserve any of it, and that feeling guilty for feeling bad was just giving power to the people that hurt me."

Klara made the Anti-Venom that had been forced on her retreat from her arm and extended a hand to Ashley, helping her up. "Now, it's not a contest. You're allowed to think that your life is bad. Why don't you tell me what happened?"

"Well, uh... It started a couple of years ago when I realized that I was probably gonna die... See, my power is that I produce a bunch of extra hormones and then they rearrange their molecular structures to make stronger versions of themselves. And I'm super resistant to drugs and chemicals, but they don't line up right so without my symbiote I'm basically constantly weak and tired and the chemical imbalance means my immune system is garbage so I'm sick all the time and I realized that I was probably gonna die of pneumonia or something by the time I was fifteen and I had a talk with my Grandpa about getting better and not giving up, but... And then he died and that... That hurt, and... About a year ago, some strange men broke into my apartment and... and I'd been terrified that some anti-mutant wacko would see my family leaving the Mutant clinic where my doctor worked and follow us home, so I was really scared and..." Ashley slowed down and started breathing heavily. "I watched them shoot my Daddy when he came to help, and then they killed Mommy, and... I spent a year strapped to a metal table with tubes all in me so the people who kidnapped me could harvest my fluids to make Mutant Growth Hormone, and then a bunch of clones they were making got loose and a bunch of people died and I ended up in this world, and... and I always wanted to be a hero and this is my chance and... But I don't think I'm doing such a good job."

"...Weaver's your Foster sister, right? And her family is going to adopt you?" Klara asked, changing the subject.

"Yeah?"

"And you've got friends now?"

"Y-yeah?"

"I'm going to tell you something that makes me feel better when I'm upset about what happened to me: The people who hurt you? They're dead now. They can't hurt you anymore, not unless you let them, and you're alive, with friends and family that care about you, and that's something that the people who hurt you can never, ever take away. They might have hurt you, bad, but you won and you can get better. Wounds heal. Scars fade... In fact, hold on a second."

Klara left off to where the Wards' private rooms were. A few minutes later, she came out with a small terracotta pot full of potting soil. "I asked them to supply me with gardening supplies, a couple of flowerpots, some soil and seeds because I like to garden and they were willing to accept my terms because apparently healing powers are super rare here," she explained. "But I think I can spare one." Klara pulled a seed from her pocket and buried it in the pot. "Grow," she said.

Before Ashley's eyes, the seed sprouted and quickly grew into a small bush with vibrant red roses blooming off of it. "Think of it like a plant. In a bad environment, it'll just wither and die. But in a good environment, even a plant that's been hurt can grow up big and strong with you put in the work and take care of it. Understand?"

"Uh, yeah," Ashley said awkwardly.

Klara handed her the pot. "Here."

Ashley took, it, slowly, but quickly admitted: "I don't know how to take care of plants."

"It'll be fine for a little bit," Klara said quickly. "And I can teach you what you need to know. I'm sure you'll do fine."

"Oh, okay. Thank you... Are, are we friends now?"

"I think we are. Now, are you any good at videogames? Becuase I was told that there was a console with some racing games in the rec room here."

"I don't know, I've never played a racing game," Ashley admitted. "But I'll give it a shot. Just let me put this in my room."

Ashley carried the rose bush to her and Taylor's shared room and gently set it on an unused table, before coming out to head to the rec room with Klara. "So, what's Chase Stein like in person?"

"More or less exactly the way he was in those interviews. He didn't exactly take the Murderworld thing well, but..."

 **AN:** This side-story is canon and is happening concurrently with the next 1-3 chapters of the main story.


	23. Weapon Cute

**Weapon Cute**

Here he was. In the wilderness, stabbing soldiers wearing alien-dragon-goo monsters in the chest. If it wasn't so cold, he'd think he was back in 'Nam.

Well, that, and the fact that he had backup this time. Before it was just him and a Life-Model Decoy of Nick Fury. This time...

A sym-soldier to Logan's left suddenly had a bunch of white goo on his face and screamed as the symbiote began to sizzle and boil. As the pain distracted him, he was knocked down by shield bounce off of him.

It'd started about a week ago. He, Captain America, and Agent Anti-Venom had all been working the same case from different angles. Anti-Venom had heard rumors of people disappearing in incidents involving Symbiotes when all the usual suspects were accounted for and feared a repeat of that Invasion from back when Parker had a dozen clones running around. Rogers had been contacted by someone in the army who tipped him off that some money and some data about the various attempts to make more Captain Americas had been funneled into a joint project between the United States and Canada but the files had all been blacked out.

And Logan? Someone, or rather, several very strong and very heavily armed someone had kidnapped a couple of mutant children. A sixteen-year-old boy who could breathe chlorine gas. An eight-year-old-boy who could sweat nitroglycerine, and a ten-year-old girl with a whole host of hormonal problems from a bad mutation.

The three men had each investigated on their own, each followed leads into a seemingly abandoned section of the Canadian wilderness, and crossed paths there. They compared notes, and a pattern emerged.

The whistleblower who tipped off Rogers had informed him of who exactly had been in the files that had been sent along with the disappeared funding. Isaiah Bradly and his Grandson. The effect of Nuke's adrenaline pills on both himself and on others who took them. The Medical treatments that gave Cage his powers, and someone named Todd Ziller and every last bit of data on the Mercury Team and Weapon Plus 2.0. Also, some stuff that Osborn had been up to when he was basically running the US.

The missing persons who tipped off Thompson, five, included a mutant growth hormone addict, an Inhuman hybrid whose saliva could induce adrenaline rushes in people, two unrelated mutates with napalm spit, and a seemingly normal human with a ridiculous level of drug and alcohol tolerance.

Eight people, all between the ages of eight and twenty-one, all with some chemical-related trait.

All of that, based on Canada? Weapon Plus was up to something with symbiotes. If it hadn't been obvious at first, the Symbiote-Soldiers with fatigues that said "Weapon V" that they'd practically been tripping over since they got here made it pretty damn clear.

Which brought them back to the present. Two-Weapon V soldiers had been patrolling the forest, but they hadn't been ready for three superhuman veterans.

Wolverine retracted his claws and let the soldier he'd stabbed through the chest fall, dead. Normally he'd have been inclined to show mercy around Rogers and one of Web-Head's friends, but these punks had been working for people who kidnapped children, and... The agony that Weapon Plus experiments left people in was enough that his healing factor blanked out everything during and before his own treatment and it took him years to get it back. He wouldn't wish that on his worst enemy, let alone a bunch of kids.

The one that Rogers and Thompson had taken care of, on the other hand, was very much still alive, if currently unable to use his legs. He'd seen what Venom and Carnage were capable of, that broken spine would fix itself in no time. Face still exposed from Thomson's slime melting away the symbiote, the man pulled himself with his hands to his dead comrade. Logan stepped between his shoulder blades.

"Bub, you've about three seconds to tell us where you're keeping the kids. Otherwise, you're gonna find out why it is I say that what I do isn't very nice."

"You're too late," the man said. "They've already been given over to a cause greater than themselves." Logan put his full weight on the foot he had on the man's back. His bones and muscles were superhumanly dense and his entire skeleton was coated with an almost indestructible iron allow, so his full weight was usually enough to crush a man to death if he did it right.

The Weapon V soldier, however, seemed to be made of sterner stuff. He didn't even grunt. What a trooper.

"I mean, what are a few lives compared to protecting the world from aliens, mutants, communists, and god knows whatever freaks you bastards have just been letting run around unchecked," the soldier said. He seemed to have no idea just how angry he was making Logan just by running his mouth.

"Look," he said while taking the time to, slowly, one at a time, pop his claws again with a nice, satisfying 'snikt,' "let me tell you that Weapon Plus are full of so much shit that there isn't even a joke for it. They're not gonna protect anyone, they just want to use an army of super slaves to take over the world and kill anyone different from them."

"You're a damned liar!" The man screamed. "You're just jealous becuase you, and Rogers, and Thompson and everyone else are just failed projects! We're all here! Weapon V, Weapon I, VI, VII... Even got some assets retrieved from those turncoats in the X program! We're so damn close... I won't let you ruin it!"

"Son," Rogers spoke up. "You're not really in any position to stop us. If you just tell us where your base is and where we can find the prisoners, I'll ask that you be shown mercy when we drop you and your friends off with the authorities."

The fanatic just started laughing. "Cap? We're sanctioned by Uncle Sam and the Canadian Government. There's no mercy to show, becuase everything we've done has been greenlit... Face it, you Mutie-Loving traitor, you're the ones breaking the law here... And there's one thing I can do to stop you."

Thompson suddenly stepped up next to Logan, a firearm that he'd pulled from... Somewhere trained on the fanatic's head. "I think that's quite enough about tha—"

And then the Weapon V lunatic screamed "We're in CANADA you dumb fucks!" and tore a piece of his dead friend off with his teeth.

Logan's blood ran cold. "Thompson, shoot! Shoot now!" and jumped off of the madman.

Thompson obliged and emptied the Magazine into the Weapon V soldier's head and chest, but not fast enough to stop him from swallowing. The man began convulsing on the ground and his wounds healed before their eyes as he began to grow... Hairier.

Thompson reloaded and kept shooting, but it was a lost cause.

"We need to get the hell out of here," Logan said. "I was prepared for venom's uglier cousins. I was prepared for soldiers. I was prepared for knock-off mes. I was not prepared for—"

"WEN! DI! GO!" The now giant monster said as it pushed itself up, transformation complete.

"...A symbiote-powered Wendigo."

The creature was black with red tiger stripes, with claws like sickles and a mouth of curved fangs like a god-damned T-rex. Spikes jutted awkwardly from it's back. It glared at Logan, opened its mouth...

But before it could roar it was assaulted from all sides by a deafening barrage of automatic gunfire, bullets piercing it and then exploding into white-hot fire. The Wendigo screamed in pain but after a full minute of sustained assault in shrank and was replaced by a very badly burned and mutilated corpse.

A couple dozen more symbiote soldiers came out of the trees, shimmering as they dropped their camouflage... Damn it, the whole section of the forest had been so saturated with the scent of the aliens that he couldn't get one's scent when they were right on top of him! Three more, far bigger ones came out next, carrying oversized flame throwers and...

Logan sniffed. Now that he knew they were there, it was easy enough to make out the distinct scent underneath the smell of alien parasite. Bit of him. Bit of Sabretooth, Domino, Deathstrike, a couple of others... and Banner. He'd met Weapon H once. the process of making him must have been what crazy had meant when he said they'd gotten some assets from Weapon X and then they'd mixed it with symbiote soldiers.

"This day just keeps getting better and better," he deadpanned.

"And that, ladies and gentleman," one symbiote soldier, his symbiote looking more like heavy-duty armor than the armored fatigues of the others spoke, ignoring Logan's outburst, "is why you never want to be too devoted to the cause. Morgan worked himself into such a fury that he forgot the rest of us were here and almost ruined everything."

The two sym-hulkverines turned their flame-throwers—actually shooting some kind of white-hot plasma—and completely destroyed the corpse. Which was smart. Just becuase a wendigo is dead, that doesn't mean they're not still cursed.

"I'm sure you can relate," the apparent leader of the squadron said while looking to Captain America. "Veteran of The Second World War, with all that propaganda depicting the Germans and the Japanese as subhuman and their doing the same to us and ours, not to mention the kind of fucked-up shit the Nazis got up to, you have to have run into at least one person who was in it more for the killing of Nazis than the liberating of Europe."

"Where are the kids?" was Roger's only response.

"Ah ah ah," the commander said as all the weapons were turned onto the three heroes. He himself produced some kind of pistol from inside his symbiote and aimed it at Agent Anti-Venom. "You're hardly in the position to be making demands or asking questions. Now, I hate to do this to a national treasure and his friends, but you're the ones who took the bait."

"Bait?" Thomspon asked?

"Oh, yes. Doctor... You know, I don't think I ever learned his name. He just tells everyone to call him Doctor... Anyway, the head of the facility wants the original Weapons I and X test subjects and to get a good look at the unique properties of the anti-venom symbiote. I'm not 100% sure what for, but it's got something to do with completing Weapon XVII. So, we leaked just enough information about what we were doing in just the right places to make the three of you come running. Had Deadpool in here a week ago, but he escaped. I don't know where he got the inflatable raft from. I don't want to know. Anyway, I'm going to have to ask you all to disarm. Cap, gently roll the shield over to Agent Ramirez here to my right."

Not seeing an easy means of escape, Rogers obliged, allowing the shield to roll like a loose wheel to the indicated soldier.

"Agent Dresden, take Thompson's rifle and any other guns on his person, be careful not to touch his symbiote, and Thompson, in case it isn't obvious, we know about the extradimensional pocket trick so no funny business."

Again, with the symbiote-soldiers outnumbering and outflanking them meant that Thompson didn't have much choice but to comply, surrendering his automatic rifle, two automatic pistols, three fragmentary grenades, and several clips and magazines for each firearm.

Then the commander pulled the trigger on his pistol, shooting some kind of dart into Thompson. Thompson's symbiote briefly flashed black, then received back into his body. He stumbled for a bit from the sudden shift, but his prosthetic legs held. "Supervenom," the Sym-Soldier-Commander explained unprompted. "Norman Osborn invented it when the original Anti-Venom was harassing his fake-spiderman. Heal's symbiotes from damage cuased by Anti-Venom and temporarily neutralizes the Anti-Venom symbiote. for the next couple of hours, Thompson, you're no different from any other veteran who lost his legs in whatever armed conflict it was. Too damn many to remember."

A few minutes later, the three of them were being marched through the forest at the barrel of multiple guns. Logan kept his eyes and ears open for any faltering, any sign of weakness that could be used to escape but apparently, they'd sent the two least competent rookies to be the bait for the last leg of their trap. Everyone here seemed to be an experienced professional soldier and they were clearly up to the task of handling this.

"I don't get it," Rogers said to the commander "You seem like an affable fellow, why do... This? Work for a secret conspiracy dedicated to genocide?"

"I had a wife and a daughter," the Sym Soldier commander said. "While I was stationed overseas, one of our neighbors... A mutant whose power was that his eyes were solid purple... That's it, just a cosmetic change, shot up the whole damn neighborhood while ranting about the superiority of mutants over humans. He was taken down by a police sniper after taking three people hostage in his house following the initial attack. They searched his house and found a whole room full of pictures of Apocolypse and all the other Mutant Supremacist types and articles and papers that mentioned Apocalypse and a manifesto that mentioned Apocalypse fifty god-damn times. My wife ran off after that. Filed for divorce. She blamed me for not being there to keep her safe. I got back from my tour just in time to claim my daughter's body at the morgue. The cause of death was blood loss from multiple non-fatal gunshots. M.E. said it had to have been on purpose, to make her suffer longer. She was _three_."

The man pointed the barrel of a rifle he'd pulled from his symbiote at the start of the march at Logan. "Howlett here. Or Logan. Wolverine... Whatever he's calling himself? He's cool. It'll be a shame to lose someone like him. In different circumstances, I'd probably have bought him a beer. But people like Apocalypse? Magneto? The people who buy fully into the Homo Superior bullshit and use it to call for the extinction of baseline humans? Them? Their followers? Their ideology, their memes? They're an existential threat to humanity and civilization as we know it that needs to be stopped. Weapon Plus stands the best chance of doing that."

"And the countless innocent people who'll suffer and die if Weapon Plus wins?" Rogers countered.

"You're a hundred years old, Rogers," the Commander replied. "You can't possibly be that naive. Innocent people die as casualties of any war. Besides, they say that in a couple hundred years the mutant gene will have activated in all human bloodlines so unless you kill all humans it's not possible to genocide mutants. At absolute most, this is just purging a corrupted generation and starting fresh."

"Yeah," Logan deadpanned, "I bet that's what the guards at Auschwitz thought about the jews." He was jabbed in the back by the barrel of someone's rifle and the rest of the march was done in silence.

The Weapon Plus base was situated in a large clearing, built up against a hill. If Logan suspected that a mine or some such had been there once and the tunnels had been repurposed to give them multiple underground rooms. He didn't particularly like the smell of the place, as he found his attention drawn to the chimney on its eastern wall and the recent smell of blood and burned flesh coming from the incinerator at the chimney's bottom. He'd been _joking_ damn it.

Most of the symbiote-soldiers split off after they got to the base, but the Commander and two others, including the guy who'd taken Cap's shield, stayed behind to keep the three of them marching once they entered the building. Th smell of blood was stronger here. Eight people, the eight kids they'd been here to rescue, had all bled a lot in the last few days.

"How are you any better than purple-eyes?" He said. "You're helping the psycho that runs this place torture and kill kids. Don't you think their parents might feel the same way about you and yours that you feel about purple-eyes and Apocalypse?"

"You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs," the man said coldly.

And then he heard it. It was damn near earsplitting, a child. A little girl. Screaming in agony. From how Thompson and Rogers flinched, it was loud enough that you didn't need super senses to hear it. At least one of the kids was still alive. They could still save her, and that meant that they suddenly had a time limit for escaping and tearing down the facility.

Logan spun around, popped his claws, and stabbed the soldier behind him square in the chest in one fluid motion. In the next second, he grabbed the soldier's rifle and fired it one-handed into the commander, emptying the magazine. Rogers took the distraction to turn, gab his shield from the soldier that took it, and pull it back to himself, and then the three of them were rushing down to hall heading towards the sound of the screaming.

"Thomspon," Logan began, "you're unarmed and depowered. Split off, find some bolt hole, and wait till either this is over or your powers come back. We'll find you."

"To hell with that!" Thompson replied. "I was a career soldier before I was Venom. I saved a whole planet without a symbiote once. I can still throw a punch, I can still fight. I'll just grab a gun off the first sym-soldiers we find if I have to."

"Happy to serve with you, soldier," Rogers replied, and that was that.

Three minutes later, the kid was still screaming and they hadn't run into any more soldiers. The scream was getting louder, but... "Anyone else feel like this is another trap?" Thompson said.

"I looked three sets of parents in the eyes and promised I'd do my best to get their kids back," Logan admitted. "If there's even a chance I can rescue even one of them I've got to take it."

They came to a set of reinforced doors just as the screaming started to die down. A keypad told said it was electronically locked, but a lot of these places had really poorly designed electronic locks. Logan buried his claws into the keypad and the door opened. The same mistake everyone makes.

The room smelled of ozone, and the screaming wasn't fake. There was an actual little girl being lifted out of a vat of some kind of chemical by a mechanical arm and some kind of harness. Her back was to them, her skin grey except around her major blood vessels which glowed green and the bright red mark between her shoulders. That explains it, Logan thought bitterly. An Apocalypse fanatic killed that guy's kid, so he helped torture a kid in Apocalypse's family. didn't matter where she came from, the point is these bastards were hurting a little girl.

From what could be seen of the child as she was, short metal spikes were jutting from her shoulders and upper arms and syringes embedded in her arms and legs with hookups for various IV tubes. For a kid who'd been screaming a few seconds ago, she seemed remarkably calm now. He couldn't be sure it wasn't part of the harness, but he couldn't be sure she wasn't wearing the same kind of helmet he had on when Weapon X bonded the Adamantium to his skeleton.

A man in a lab coat observed the whole process with cold eyes and as the girl was sat down and the harness pulled away from her, he pulled a handgun from within his coat and fired on the girl. A bullet hole exploded in the wall above and behind the doctor, which made him smile. "Project Power enhancements successful. Suit up, Weapon XVII, it's time for your medicine." A Weapon V symbiote formed around the child from neck to feet, becoming identical to the standard armored fatigues of the symbiote soldiers save for her head and the syringes sticking out. A literal child soldier

He didn't know what the kid's medicine was, and he didn't want to know. Claws out, Logan ran into the room intending to just kill the doctor and get it over with and then got the crap shot out of him by half a dozen Weapon V soldiers who faded in from camouflage at the corners of the room. More soldiers came up from behind, forcing Thompson and Rogers into the room and the Commander from before materialized and tore the Shield out of Roger's hands. "You people are a bunch of god damn idiots."

As Logan regenerated, he noted that the kid was standing next to the doctor with her mouth open and her tongue stuck out. The man pulled a red pill—that bastard was giving one of Nuke's red pills to a kid? He pulled a red pill from a bottle, settled it on the girl's tongue, and watched as she immediately swallowed it. The kid convulsed on her feet for a few moments but then stopped, her symbiote seeming to become flushed for a moment. Logan wasn't able to get much of a good look after that, becuase his still injured body was being picked up and manhandled onto some platform he hadn't seen before. He could See Rogers being manipulated onto the same on the opposite side of the room by the super-strong symbiote soldiers, but Thompson was merely being held in place.

Without a word, the doctor marched up to Thompson, pulled a needle out of his jacket, and jammed it into Thomspons's neck. A few seconds later, he stepped away with a vial full of Thompson's blood.

"Okay," Thompson said. "You went to a great deal of effort to get us here. Why?"

"You, Thompson? It's mostly just to test a theory." The man produced a handheld device from inside his coat... How many pockets did he have in there? And placed the vial in it, next to an empty vial already plugged in. He pressed a button, the vial of blooded emptied into the device, the whole thing vibrated for a second, and then the second vial filled with some black and white slime suspended in a blue liquid like a lava lamp.

"You see, while... Examining, the bodies of the United State's Anti-Symbiote Task Force's Mercury Team, I took note of the traces of symbiote mass that Venom's offspring left behind in their hosts' cells and I got curious... Could I integrate those pieces into other symbiotes, to pass on their unique abillities? Testing confirmed 'yes.' So now, what I want to see," he said as he loaded the new vial into a new needle and walked up to the kid, still sanding silently and patiently, "is if the same can be done with Anti-Venom?"

"Wait," Rogers said as the doctor lined up the syringe with one of the open ones already jabbed into the girl. "Antivenom destroys symbiotes. This could all backfire horribly and cost you all the work you've put into her."

"We have put a lot of work in her... Viral gene therapy to correct a glaring flaw in her mutation, the most successful recreation of the Super Soldier Serum augmented with mutant growth hormone, surgical augmentations, cybernetics, nanomachines, further gene therapy, Gamma Ray exposure... Literally just made her bulletproof... and the constant adrenaline treatments to make sure her symbiote grows at the optimal rate" He pulled the syringe back. "On the other hand... We've archived her DNA both digitally and as blood samples and her physiological data since we got her here and have taken multiple samples of her symbiote as we've experimented with it. Worst case scenario, we can clone another one." with that, he jammed in the syringe and pressed the plunger.

The child began screaming again and fell to the floor. It looked like she was having a seizure. Logan struggled against the soldiers holding him and from the corner of his eye he could see Rogers and Thompson doing the same. Eventually, however, the child stopped and climbed back to her feet, standing at attention.

"The one thing I'm having trouble with?" The doctor said. "Pain. It's easy enough to turn it off. Much harder to turn it off without affecting the other sensations. Pain is a distraction, but it also tells you when you're hurt and it seems I can't get rid of one without getting rid of at least the other. Anyway, onto the test."

The man approached the far wall and opened up a panel, from which he pulled a canister full of black goo. "Weapon XVII, hold out your hands and think about killing a symbiote."

The child held her hands out and the man dumped the canister out over them, letting the symbiote bubble and dissolve when it made contact with her own.

"Good, good, very good!" The doctor said. "And that brings us to why Weapon I and Weapon X are here." the doctor snapped and the soldiers holding Logan and Rogers let go and jumped to the side just as two glass tubes fell from the ceiling and trapped them.

Then there came a high pitched, earsplitting whine. And it started getting warmer, and...

The next thing Logan knew, he was on his knees covering his ears and sweating through his costume. The whining stopped and while breathing heavily Logan looked up and say multiple IV tubes from the ceiling were pumping red and black goo into the kid.

"You see while studying the remnants of the symbiotes in a host's body, I made a remarkable discovery: Those remnants record physiological information and the skills, memories, and emotions of those hosts, in addition to a fraction of the symbiote's original powers. And wouldn't you know it, right here there's an immortal Canadian Samurai and an Ageless Centigenarian who between them have literal centuries of experience in Martial Arts, firearm use, melee weapon use, military tactics, espionage, survivalism, and assassination and have both had symbiotes. Between what we took from you, what I harvested from the mercury team, and what we got from that irritating mercenary, the child is now one of the greatest soldiers and martial artists in the world. In other words," he finished, "by taking your symbiote remnants and giving them to Weapon XVII, I've completed the child's transformation into the ultimate killing machine. My only regret is that I couldn't figure out how to lure Manwolf or The Thing out here to give her Astronaut training."

"Now all that's left is to field test her. Weapon XVII, do you want to demonstrate your great power?"

"Great... Power...?" The little girl said. Something about it struck Logan as odd. A particularly painful sounding 'snikt' heralded the deployment of the child's own claws. Two in each hand, like Laura's... From what he'd heard of the research that cloned Laura, two claws in each hand and one in the foot was how his exact power manifested in a female body... Personally, he hoped he never found out first hand if that was true or not, but here's more evidence for it.

The doctor gave a hand sign, and one of the soldiers holding Thompson poked him with a needle and then let go of him. Within moments the Anti-Venom symbiote completely regenerated.

"Weapon XVII, kill Agent Anti-Venom."

The child ran for to steps and then jumped for Thompson, and it was all he could do to avoid getting impaled. A dozen tentacles tipped with axeheads erupted from the kid's back and swung around, each trying to chop Thompson to bits, while Logan popped his claws and dug at the glass keeping him contained. Turning people into killing machines, making a little girl kill, and this whole situation had Logan thinking of his daughter and her childhood and his blood burned.

Or maybe that was his bones. even since he'd come back to life, he'd had these... complications with his rage. His bones, especially his claws burning red hot whenever he was mad enough. glowing hot metal under his flesh hurt like absolute hell, but right now the heat was helping cut through the glass imprisoning him. He'd get out, kill that scientist and as many of his soldiers as he could, get Rogers out, and then they'd figure out how to help the kid. Maybe Jean could undo whatever conditioning is making her listen to the bastard.

He was almost loose when a loud clanging drew his attention. Thompson had gotten his hand's on Cap's shield and used it to block a blow from the kid

And now the kid had stopped trying to kill Thompson. She was just staring at the shield.

"Weapon XVII," the doctor began. "I gave you an order. Kill him."

"Bu-but... Shield. Cap... Captain America's shield. Captain America... He's the good guy."

"That's not Captain America, he... Just take the shield!"

"But... I'm not... worthy."

"It's not Mjolnir little girl," Rogers shouted from his tube. "Anyone who believes in truth and justice can use it. Do you believe in truth, and justice, and doing what's right?"

"...Ye-yeah! "

"Weapon XVII..." the Doctor said with clear frustration. "You are the inauguration of a new division and the greatest creation of the Weapon Plus program. You have a responsibility and that means following orders."

"Responsibility..." The girl said while starring at the shield. Thomspon had just given it to her... They were breaking through the programming and...

Wait a second. Logan's bones cooled as his rational mind took over again. He'd spoken to the parents of the three mutant kids who went missing. The girl's parents had admitted that their daughter practically worshiped the Web-Head... and he was always going on about how...

"Hey, kid?" He called out. "You're name's Ashley, right? Not Weapon XVII. Ashley."

"Y-ya-yeah! My name's Ashley."

"This jerk here... He said you've got a great power and responsibilities... I can't help but think that that makes you sound like a friend of mine... Oh, what was his name again?"

"Spider-Man! I'm... I'm like Spider-Man..."

"Yeah," Logan continued. "He wouldn't kill someone though. He wouldn't listen to some jerk doctor telling him to hurt people, either. Right?"

"I don't think he would," Rogers added.

"Absolutely not!" Thompson concluded.

"So, Ashley," Logan continued, careful to call her by name, "that leaves the question of what you want to do?"

The girl started screaming and bashing her head against the Shield. After three good hits, the helmet on her head split clean in half and fell off.

"Ow... Where am I?" She asked. Her posture had instantly changed and she instantly sounded scared. "I... I remember someone taking a drill to my head and then. Wait... Am I holding..?"

"We'll explain later, just stay behind me and follow my lead," Thompson said. He had powers like Web-Head, and that meant webs. Webs made of living slime that killed symbiotes, which he fired out to each Weapon V soldier in the room in a bloom that would have made the web-slinger proud.

"Well shit," the doctor said. "Well, this has clearly been a colossal waste of everyone's time so I'll just be going now and..."

And then something crashed through the ceiling. Something very big, very muscular, and as Logan cold see as the dust cleared, something very green.

"Just so everyone knows, I activated an emergency tracker in my armor the second we got captured," Rogers said. "It was Tony's idea. He felt the Avengers should all have a panic button just in case. I'd have said something earlier, but I didn't want to tip off the Weapon Plus Operatives that backup was coming."

—

She-Hulk, Thor, and Blade made quick of the rest of the Weapon V operatives and apparently, Black Panther was already trying to see about getting them tried in an international court for crimes against humanity. That left Logan and Rogers time to search the facility, but unfortunately, it seemed like Ashley was the only one of the kids to survive the last few weeks. After some... difficult phonecalls, he found himself in Avengers Mountain waiting for a member of the support staff that T'challa set up to get there with Ashley's parents so the situation could be properly explained to them.

More specifically, he was in a dead Celestial's lymph node that had been turned into a multipurpose room, watching as Jen Walters tried to instruct a little girl in how to turn off hulk-powers.

"The important thing is to stay calm. Trying to force yourself from hulk form back into human form has never worked ever," Walters explained. "Now, take a deep breath and try to shift back."

The little girl breathed in, breathed out, and red eyes turned green, grey skin got some color, and the shoulder and upper arm spikes retracted into the girl's flesh. "Ow." she'd just experienced a major shift in muscle structure and had sharp metal spikes retract into her body and all she had to say was 'ow.' The kid was a trooper. She'd already shifted the symbiote into a t-shirt and poodle shirt over tights.

God, he needed a drink.

"So... I'm thinking," the little girl began, "since my powers came from Weapon Plus... I mean, Weapon XVII is a stupid name... Maybe my super name could be Weapon Cute?"

"You might want to workshop that," Logan deadpanned. "And you don't need a super name. It's not like you're gonna be fighting crime. You're too young."

The little Asian girl turned around and glared at him. "I'm twice as old as Energizer was when the Power Pack got started."

"And when's the last time you heard of the Power Pack getting up to anything?" Logan countered.

"Uh... The Runaways had two girls about my age."

"Three of the Runaways died, one disappeared into space, and the rest either got jobs or went into foster care," Logan countered again. Hopefully, that meant he'd never run into Molley Hayes again. Every time, without fail, whenever they met she'd sucker punch him square in the chest. The full strength of the Hulk focused into a little girl's fist, it always hurt like hell. "Besides, they weren't really heroes as much as, well, runaways who just happened to have powers."

"Nah uh, they got back together a few months ago. Beat up an evil old lady with a bunch of psychic cats, made national news. Then they disappeared again and I lost interest."

"Doesn't matter, you're still too young," Logan insisted.

"Most of your side-kicks weren't much older than me when you picked them up," Ashley protested.

"You're not my sidekick," Logan pointed out. "I won't be there to make sure you don't get in over your head, and most of the time the girls I mentored stayed at the School. There isn't even a school right now. You' don't have anyone to protect you."

"I have Wolverine, Hulk, Luke Cage, Captain America, and Venom powers now and I'm suddenly more or less a blackbelt in literally every martial art," she pointed out. "I didn't even know that savate existed before now. I don't think I'm physically capable of dying or being permanently hurt anymore."

"Kid," Logan said while looking her in the eye. "There are things that are so much worse than death or physical pain. Things you got a taste of this past week, but are far, far worse than that. Being immortal just means that there's no escape from that. You want to be a hero? Wait till you're old enough to smoke and drink. Once it's legal for you to be self-destructive, then you can make that choice."

"Uh... My doctor gave me a shot of whiskey once while we were testing my chemical immunity, so..."

"That doesn't count."

"This is why your daughter was a better Wolverine than you," the girl said defiantly while Walters laughed. "She doesn't make excuses not to let Honey Badger fight crime."

Logan sighed. "Look, talk about it with your parents. If they say it's okay... And if I ever run into you in costume, you better have a signed and notarized permission slip on you. With both parents' signatures. And don't try to forge it. I was a school headmaster, I can smell a fake." That would take care of things for maybe a few years and—

"There's no such thing as a parental permission slip for Superheroics," Ashley called his bluff. "I've checked." Damn it.

"Still, at least clear it with your parents first." He'd talk to Spider-Man, have him go to talk to her and try to talk her out of it. She respected him, she might listen to him.

"Okay," she agreed. Then she yawned and stretched her hands up above her head. She flexed a little bit and a web line shot out of her sleave and hit the ceiling. Without a word, the girl walked over to a wall, spider-climbed up it, skittered into the middle of the room, and sat on the ceiling. "This completely makes up for being kidnapped, losing a few weeks of memories, and all the pain I probably suffered but can't remember."

She sounded completely genuine as she said it. Logan was now 100% sure she'd listen if Spider-Man told her to wait until she grew up to be a superhero.

The girl's parents were led into the room by... Jameson's kid. Manwolf. Huh, he'd been mentioned by name earlier. Weird.

—

The girl's parents had taken the whole thing... surprisingly well. Apparently, they'd been researching some extreme measures for curring the debilitating sickness that came with her powers. Their little girl wasn't traumatized, she didn't even remember most of what happened, and she'd come back from the ordeal far stronger and healthier than she'd been in a long time. The people who'd hurt her weren't in any position to hurt her or anyone else ever again... If she was okay, they were okay. They didn't even care when she hulked out and showed off her symbiote, as long as she was happy and healthy.

Logan was a rather cynical man, but he had to admit that seeing that kind of unconditional love was refreshing. Especially among the human parents of a mutant child.

They'd asked him to pass along their condolences to the families of the kids who didn't make it, but that could wait until he was in the mood for more difficult phone calls. He kind of regretted informing them of that bit. The kid started crying when she realized that people had died.

He stumbled into his apartment, intending to drink himself to sleep and wake up in a day or two, but he realized that someone else was there. He sniffed the air, cursed, and flipped the light switch, revealing Wade Wilson standing in the middle of his living room. Wilson was dressed only in a kilt that had clearly been made from an inflatable raft.

"Wolverine. We need to get to Canada ASAP. Weapon Plus is torturing kids and they pulled symbiote goo out of me to make a superweapon."

Logan face-palmed and explained that it had already been taken care of.

 **AN:** Well, Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Fuck if this isn't longer than I planned.


	24. After the End

The following is a Non-Canon Side-Story based on Ward, the second story in the Parahumans series.

It is non-canon because 1: the only way Ward can come to pass is if things go all the way FUBAR due to the many changes in-story. 2: Becuase it's ignoring a bunch of my future plans to avoid spoiling them and 3: I've already established that the main story is part of a stable time-loop:

Missy stood before the cabin in the middle of nowhere. Even with her space compression powers, it'd taken her hours to get here though, hopefully, getting home would be faster. She steeled her nerves, as she hadn't spoken to the person who lived here... Well, it had been a while.

She was about to knock on the door when a "What are you doing here?" from behind her, which caused her to, in the startle, spin on her heal, transform, and charge up a blast of energy only to realize that she was aiming at the person she was here to see.

A fourteen-year-old Asian girl with shoulder-length black hair, dressed in a dirty robe that went down to just past her knees, with those legs bare down to the feet. Her skin was a shade or two darker than before, with some freckling on her face, so clearly she was spending a lot of time in the sun. Her hair wasn't bound back, the way it was before, and she'd clearly stopped caring about it at somepoint. She was taller than Missy was now, even though Missy was almost an adult at this point.

"That's nice," she snarked. "Show up to someone's house unannounced and then attack them."

"Sorry," Missy. "You startled me." Missy let the energy disperse and switched back into her more mature, non-Hulk form. Ashley was still taller than her. "What are you wearing?"

The robe melted into gold and blue slime, that quickly formed suit not-unlike the superhero costume that Ashley had worn as a child, but without a mask. Or a logo. just bits of dark blue marbled through the limbs and torso. With the change in outfit, it became apparent that Ashley was more developed and muscular than a girl her age had any right to be and Missy was pretty sure that Ashley didn't even work out to get it.

"The same thing I always wear," Ashley replied bluntly. "I just figured that if I'm gonna be a crazy hermit living alone out in the woods that I should look the part."

"Didn't you tell me once that you were never alone?" Missy asked.

Ashley looked at her blankly. "Why are you here?"

"I'm not allowed to visit an old friend?"

"Not after two years of nothing," Ashley replied.

"I'm sorry," Missy said. And she was. "It's just, after you said you were heading out into the woods... you settled down a hundred miles from the city. We all figured you needed space, and then I was busy with the Wardens, and..."

"... C'mon in, you're probably tired from the trip."

The inside of the cabin was absolutely spartan. A simple refrigerator in a corner plugged into a generator, a wood stove with a tall chimney that went out the roof, simple windows cut out of the logs, a simple wooden table, one handcrafted wooden chair, and a futon on the floor in the corner opposite the refrigerator. Some cabinets were the only other furnishing.

"Are you hungry?" Ashley asked. "I have venison, I've got some wild root vegetables and mushrooms, I have some wild berries, I have jerky that I made out of venison, and I have some stew leftover from last night. It's made out of venison, wild mushrooms, and wild root vegetables."

"What, no bear meat?" Missy joked.

"No bear in this part of the woods," Ashley said seriously. "There's some in a territory a day's walk south, but the population's too low for me to feel okay with eating them. Are you thirsty? I've got bottled water I get from a trader, I've got some juice I make from the local berries, and I've got some moonshine I make in a still outback from the leftovers after the berries are juiced and just a touch of the juice." She paused for a minute. "I recommend the water, the moonshine will probably blind you and I never actually figured out if the berries are safe for human consumption."

"...Why are you making moonshine?" Missy found herself asking. Normally, people would be concerned about a girl Ashley's age brewing alcohol. Missy was more confused about what Ashley got from it since her powers neutralized alcohol before it even got to her bloodstream.

Ashley shrugged. "Gotta do something to kill time."

Ten minutes later, Missy was sitting in Ashley's only chair, contemplating the half-empty bottle of water she'd been drinking from and wondering how to bring up the matter at hand while Ashley sat crosslegged on her futon.

"Did they ever build that statue of Taylor?" Ashley asked. The city had statues, of prominent members of the Wardens and important people, memorials for everyone who perished when the world ended... except for Weaver, the hero who gave everything to end the madness.

"No," Missy replied. "I'm sorry."

"Is Riley Davis still locked up while unrepentant terrorists got the full amnesty and act free?"

"...Yes."

Ashley scoffed. "And people wonder why I chose to live in the woods. Why are you here?"

"There's some trouble with Earth Shin. they're trying to back out of a deal, and if they do millions of people are gonna starve," Missy explained somberly. "They're asking for specific people to represent us in the negotiation, and uh... Look, Shin's opinions on Parahumans reminds me of the stories you used to tell us about being afraid of people finding out you were a mutant because they might firebomb your apartment. I'm suspicious as fuck. I got permission to recruit one person to be part of the diplomatic party and... I know it's been a while, but I trust you. I'd feel safer walking into enemy territory with you watching my back."

Ashley looked away from Missy. "I stopped living in human civilization for a reason, Missy... After everything that happened?"

"For old time's sake?"

"I don't work for the Wardens," Ashley said. "This is a favor to you, one and done. I do things my way, and my only priority is making sure everyone gets home safe. Understand?"

"Yes."

"And Missy?"Ashley asked as she stood up.

"Yeah?"

And then Missy found herself pulled into a bearhug with chiropractic properties by her friend of four years. "I'm sorry for being so prickly. It's good to see you."

"Ashley friend," Missy said as though she were a cavewoman. "Ashley no crush Missy."

This prompted Ashley to start laughing like a lunatic. and then she started crying, and Missy made a silent promise to visit with her far more often come hell or high water.


	25. Wards Watch Marvel TV

**The Wards React To TV From the Marvel Universe**

Ashley sat in the Fantastic Four's entertainment room absolutely fuming at the anchors' dialog on the news program.

Missy, likewise, frowned. "So the news can just flat out lie?"

"Roxx News is owned by the Roxxon corporation. They do what they want and no one stops them," Ashley said bitterly. "Like, everyone knows they're the number one reason why it's not safe to eat the meat in Canada becuase they keep trying to profit off of Wendigos. When Taylor and I were patrolling with Ms. Marvel, she said that they basically got off scot-free for selling humanity out to the elves. Just assume that everything they say is a lie."

"So this Captain Britain person isn't a secret plant from Krakoa to enslave the people of the United Kingdom?"

"Look, that's obviously the old Captain Britain's sister... She used to be stuck in a Japanese girl's body though," Ashley clarified. "It's really weird and I don't know the details. And that picture of the current Excaliber roster is obviously 'shopped because there's no way in hell that the X-Men would ever work with Apocalypse."

"Are you absolutely sure about that?" Missy asked.

"Of course I am. That would be like Captain America working with Hitler."

"That picture didn't look edited," Lisa added.

 _ **"WE WIL EAT YOUR BRAIN!"**_ Ashley said through a mouth full of dagger-like fangs and using the vocal filter from her Superior Apocalypse stint.

"If you had the guts to kill you'd have killed Alexandria," Lisa deadpanned back.

"Maybe we should just change the channel?" Dean suggested in the hopes of killing the argument.

Missy responded by hitting the up-channel button and the news program was replaced by a fuzzy white critter talking to the viewers.

"Oh, god, change it. Change it," Ashley said suddenly.

"Why, it seems nice," Graced added, speaking up for the first time.

"This is Xemnu from the Magic Planet," Ashley said derisively. "It's a baby show for babies about an alien from a magic planet... Except that's not a guy in a costume. Xemnu the Titan, also known as the Living Hulk, is an actual evil alien-cyborg with powerful mind control abilities who was using this show to make people susceptible to his control and then he got stopped. I don't even know why they're... Wait, this is a new episode... And it's on Roxx Junior, problem solved."

Not wanting to be brainwashed, Missy changed the channel again. This time, it was a massive green-grey reptilian monster running through New York City and fighting two giant people in yellow and black bug-themed outfits. "Oh, hey, a Godzilla movie. I guess without real giant monsters destroying Japan's infrastructure there was nothing to kill the interest in these. Why's it on the History Channel though?"

"No," Ashley clarified, "this is a documentary about the Avengers. This is News Real Footage from the time they fought Godzilla. So what did you mean about Godzilla movies? You've got movies about him?"

Missy's eyes bugged out and then she changed the channel. "We are not having this conversation right now."

The next channel was a cartoon about a man with Black hair in a blue costume and a red cape with a Gold and red S-Shield emblem fighting some kind of grey-skinned villain in dark-colored armor. "So who's thins a licensed property of?" Missy asked.

"Nobody, that's Superman. He's a fictional character." She shrugged. "I don't really know that much about him since I always preferred stories of real Superheroes."

It was at that moment that Franklin Richards walked in. "Oh, hey, Superman. You know he's real in a parallel universe? I met him once and he was briefly a Herald of Galactus. Which, by the transitive property, means that he was _my_ Herald."

It was at this moment that Missy threw the remote at Ashley, who caught it, and stomped out of the room mumbling about how there was no normal TV in this universe.

Meanwhile, Ashley flipped the channel a few times until she caught sight a noodly stretchy limbed scary girl with a laser scythe beating up a kid in a pink letterman jacket and some technicolor people singing about meeting someone's other friends. "wow." Ashley said. "I am _way_ behind."


End file.
